The Minister for Youth and Sports Vincent Oppong Asamoah has praised telecommunication giants Airtel highly for the Airtel Rising Stars (ARS) initiative.

The ARS module sought to provide platform for the youth in the country to express their football talents.

At the launch of the fifth edition in Accra, Hon. Asamoah indicated that the ARS module has come at a time the national juvenile soccer sides are struggling.

To him, the initiative which combines education and football should be accorded the needed attention since it has a huge potential to rescue the juvenile football crisis confronting the nation.

"The performance of the national U-17 soccer side over the years is on the decline, but we hope ARS can help rescue the situation," said the sports minister.

He added "Coaches should consider ARS as the right platform to select players into the national juvenile teams.

“ARS can help support U-17, and we want to commend ARS for this brilliant initiative."

Ghana Football Association (GFA) president Kwesi Nyantakyi also praised Airtel for the initiative saying, "Let's support Airtel for this laudable initiative because it provides players to have education and the skill of football.

"This is the best way to go, when one fails, you can rely on the other because you may not know which one will fetch you money."

Managing Director of Airtel Ghana Lucy Quist said "You know how Ghanaians are passionate about football, and we have realized that the youth of this country struggle for platforms to exhibit their God-given talents hence this initiative.

"This year, like we have been doing the last five years, we will tour the regions, scout, appoint competent coaches to train the selected players who will battle for supremacy.

"Yeah we have achieved our target, last year for instance, we met our target of 20,000 participants and we hoping to exceed that figure this year.

"We are running one a campaign themed 'Time to live your dream, It's now' we want our rising stars not to postpone their dreams, it should be now, " she added.