COCA-COLA CUP 2015
Poured by
Lambro Patce
Imagine opening your eyes for a second to find a controlled chaos all around you. An entire stadium colored in red and white shirts worn by thousands of young boys and girls singing as a one the lyrics of the powerful “We are the champions”, celebrating the success of their favorite team. Smiles, children’s happiness, fair play and tons of fun. The expectation of getting a medal is hanging in the air. You might think that this is scene from the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. You are close, but not enough. This is a scene from the Rabotnichki Stadium in Skopje’s City Park hosting the largest sporting event for children aged 12 to 16 organised in Macedonia- the Coca-Cola Cup 2015 big football finals. The main stars of the events are young boys and girls from across the country, bursting with energy and enthusiasm and large audience composed of loyal supporters of each football match.
Now, let me take you on a journey back in time.
The Coca-Cola Cup is organized on all four corners of the world. Our Coca-Cola Cup story started back in 2012, when the Coca-Cola Cup was first organized as a joint project of Pivara Skopje, The Coca-Cola Company and the Open Fun Football Schools Organisation, in cooperation with elementary and secondary schools and the municipalities across Macedonia. The first Cup was attended by 700 young people, 70 schools and 7 municipalities. From that moment on, we started writing the history of the Macedonian Coca-Cola Cup. Football balls were rolling all across the country. As years went by, the pages of the story became longer and more entertaining. The next 2013 Cup was attended by 1,000 young participants, 90 schools and 9 municipalities. The phone kept ringing and our associates from the organization kept saying that no matter which town or village they went through, children were running after the Coca-Cola Cup wan asking if their school could join the Cup. Another phone call: “I would like to know if we could include 3 more municipalities and provide a dozen of red and white Coca-Cola shirts for the next week?” In 2015, we managed to exceed our targets: more than 200 matches over a period of two months attended by a record number of 2,000 young people, including 150 schools from 21 municipalities preceded the big finals.
What actually is the Coca-Cola Cup?
The primary goal of the project is to inspire healthy lifestyle habits in the youngest members of our society through regular physical and sporting activities. We believe that maintaining proper balance of consumed and burned energy is the key to healthy and fulfilled life. Sports and regular physical activity are important part of children’s proper development. Nowadays, many young people spend the majority of their time in front of their computers, TVs, and mobile phones, and less time hanging out with their friends. They lack physical activity and have no way of burning their energy. Our project is aimed at raising the awareness of enjoying moderate and balanced lifestyle through promotion of “consumed calories should match burned calories” principle and inspire young people aged 12 to 16 to be more physically active in order to actively burn the calories they consume. Regular sporting and physical activities are a great way to maintain proper energy balance which helps young people become healthier, happier and bursting with life. The objective of the Coca-Cola Cup is to convey the message for the importance of fair play, sportsmanship, more frequent socialization with friends and family, and finally, the importance of having fun.
The Coca-Cola Cup unites children, their families, schools, municipalities, NGOs and the business sector in a common platform with the aim of inspiring healthy lifestyle habits. The objective of this project is to convey the message that hard work, dedication and cooperation with other team members, and mutual respect are the only way to succeed both in life in general, and on sports field, in sport halls, our families, companies and the community we belong to. In addition to promoting sports and regular physical activity, the project aims at providing excellent basis for nurturing love towards sports, desire for making new friends and fostering family values. Young people love the Coca-Cola Cup because it is the perfect combination of sports, entertainment and socializing. Red and white shirts, football, laughter, fun and socialization have taken over everything, creating a true sporting event.
If you want to know who won this year’s Coca-Cola Cup, then you should know that the golden medal in the category of primary schools went to Ohrid, and the golden medals in the category of secondary schools will be carefully stored in school’s cabinets in Kavadarci. At the end of the day, everybody is a winner provided that they have learned what it means to be active, maintain proper balance of energy consumed and burned and how to build proper competitive spirit and fair play. What we are trying to show young people is that the more they invest their energy into things, the more likely is to be the best in it.
Now, please allow me to take you to another time travel, but this time, take our time machine straight to the future, the future which we, in Pivara Skopje, strive towards based on sustainable quality development… My place is already on the field. Don’t forget that May and April is Coca-Cola Cup time all across Macedonia. Let the balls roll!
