Two Stars Over the Himalayas: Paro FC Academy Earns Historic AFC Recognition

It is the kind of moment that makes you stop and take it in. Paro FC Football Academy has officially been awarded the AFC Two-Star Elite Youth Scheme status — making us the first club in all of South Asia to reach this landmark, and placing us among just seven academies across the entire Asian continent to hold this distinction.

Paro FC Football Academy officially receives the AFC Two-Star Elite Youth Scheme rating — a historic first for South Asian football. (June 2026)

There are milestones, and then there are moments that change the way you see what is possible. On the 13th of June 2026, Paro FC Football Academy reached one of the latter.

The Asian Football Confederation has officially conferred upon us the AFC Two-Star Elite Youth Scheme rating — one of the most respected and rigorous youth development accreditations in continental football. It is an honour that belongs not to a boardroom or a committee, but to every young player who has laced up their boots on our training ground, every coach who has given their knowledge and passion, every member of staff who believed in what we were building, and every family who trusted us with their child's dream.

This is their achievement. We are just proud to be the ones holding the certificate.

What the AFC Two-Star Rating Actually Means

The AFC Elite Youth Scheme, launched in 2017, is the Asian Football Confederation's flagship framework for identifying and celebrating the very best in youth football development across its 47 member associations. Academies are evaluated across 20 rigorous performance categories — from coaching quality and infrastructure, to player welfare, sports science, psychological support, holistic education, and safeguarding.

There are three levels: One-Star, Two-Star, and Three-Star. A Two-Star rating is not simply a step up from One-Star — it is a recognition that an academy has taken the essential building blocks of elite youth development and is now delivering them at a demonstrably higher standard. The AFC's own language describes it as foundations operating at a "significantly elevated quality."

To put that in context: this rating is evaluated by the AFC Youth Panel — a group of elite technical experts from across the continent, chaired by AFC Technical Director Andy Roxburgh. It involves a full documentation review, followed by a physical on-site assessment visit. It is not a formality. It is earned.

"Only seven academies across all of Asia currently hold the Two-Star rating. Paro FC Football Academy is now one of them."

47 AFC Member Associations across Asia

7 Academies currently holding the Two-Star rating — including Paro FC

8 Associations at Three-Star level — our next horizon

1st Club or association in all of South Asia to reach Two-Star or above

The young Tigers of Paro FC Football Academy — the reason this achievement exists and the reason it matters.

A First for South Asia — and What That Means

Let us sit with that for a moment. South Asia — a region that includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives — has never before had a club or national association reach the Two-Star or Three-Star level of the AFC Elite Youth Scheme. Paro FC Football Academy, from a country of fewer than 800,000 people nestled in the Himalayan mountains, has just changed that.

This is not a story about punching above our weight. This is a story about setting a new standard — about proving, in the most data-driven and internationally verified way possible, that elite youth football development is not the exclusive preserve of football's traditional powerhouses. It can happen here. It is happening here. And we hope that story inspires clubs and academies across the region to believe it can happen for them too.

Bhutan is on the Asian football map in a way it has never been before. And we feel the warmth and weight of that responsibility with tremendous pride.

"This is not a story about punching above our weight. This is a story about setting a new standard."

The Journey That Brought Us Here

The Two-Star rating did not arrive overnight. It is the product of years of quiet, deliberate, sometimes painstaking work — building age-group structures from the ground up, investing in coaching education, developing safeguarding and welfare frameworks, designing educational support pathways for players, and aligning everything we do with a coherent, progressive development philosophy.

The AFC evaluators who visited our campus did not just look at what we had built. They looked at how it was working — at the quality of what was being delivered inside every training session, every classroom, every welfare conversation. They looked at whether our governance was transparent and sustainable. They looked at whether our players were growing not just as footballers, but as human beings.

We are proud of what they found. And we are proud of the people who made it findable.

The coaching staff at Paro FC Football Academy — whose dedication, creativity, and belief in the process made the Two-Star rating possible.

What Our Academy Stands For

Beyond the criteria and the categories, the AFC Two-Star rating is a reflection of something simpler and more important: a belief that young people deserve the very best environment in which to grow. At Paro FC Football Academy, we have always understood that developing great footballers begins with developing great people. The pitch is where the work is most visible — but the real development happens everywhere: in the classroom, in the relationships between coaches and players, in the values we model every single day.

We develop talent. We build character. We create champions — not just in sport, but in life. And we do all of it with the ambition of representing the future of Bhutanese football in the most positive way imaginable.

That is what this Two-Star rating says about us. And that is what we intend to keep proving.

Looking Ahead: The Three-Star Horizon

We would not be Paro FC if we were content to stop here. The Three-Star rating — the AFC's highest honour, currently held by eight associations including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Qatar — is the next chapter we are writing toward.

If that ambition becomes a reality, Paro FC Football Academy would become the first club or association in all of South Asia to hold a Three-Star AFC Elite Youth Scheme rating. That prospect fills us with excitement, not pressure. It is exactly the kind of goal that gets a team out of bed in the morning.

The AFC has also announced the launch of its new AFC Youth Academy Network — a continent-wide collaborative platform designed to bring elite club academies together for an exchange of ideas, coaching philosophy, and technical knowledge. As a certified Two-Star institution, Paro FC Football Academy is uniquely positioned to be part of that conversation — sharing what we have learned in the Himalayas with academies in Tokyo, Seoul, and Sydney, and bringing their insights back to Bhutan and the wider South Asian region.

That kind of exchange — that kind of connection — is what football development at its best looks like. And we are ready for it.

The future of Paro FC — and Bhutanese football. The journey to Three Stars starts now.

Thank You

To our players — past, present, and future — thank you for trusting us with your journey. To our coaches and staff, thank you for giving so much of yourselves to this project. To our families and supporters, thank you for believing before anyone else did. And to the AFC, thank you for recognising what this community has built.

Two stars over the Himalayas. And we are only getting started.

One Club. One Vision. One Future.