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panish giant FC Barcelona has started the construction of a ¤100 million (Rp 1.2 trillion) soccer academy in Indonesia, the Spanish club’s first full residential outside Spain.

Named FC Barcelona Escola Indonesia, the soccer school is being built on 15-hectares of land in Sentul, West Java, about an hour’s drive from Jakarta.

The Barca school project has been facilitated by a group of Indonesian businessmen, called Excellion Analytics, in cooperation with Hong Kong-based High Dynamics Investment and Threesixty Sport Marketing.

“We will build our first phase of this long-term project. Hopefully, it will be a 20-year commitment,” Threesixty Sport Marketing director Arif Wicaksono told a press conference after the cornerstone-laying ceremony at the site on Wednesday.

The academy, which will be officially launched in September, will be in a compound that consists of a dormitory building and five international-standardized soccer fields, one real grass field and four synthetic grass fields.

“Right on this spot we will build a soccer school facility that is similar to La Masia in Barcelona,” said Arif, referring to the famous Barcelona-based soccer academy that has produced world class soccer player Lionel Messi and Pep Guardiola, the managerial architect of the current Barca squad.

“In the process, we will make the Sentul-based Barca academy even better than La Masia because we’ve studied the flaws of the Barcelona-based academy. We are expecting Barcelona Escola Indonesia to be the best in the world,” said Arif.

“It is indeed a huge investment, but we really want to have Indonesian kids playing for Barcelona, or any teams in Europe.”

The ¤100 million project will cost prospective students high tuition fees.

Each student of the academy will have to pay up to Rp 20 million per month to learn soccer in the image of Messi and company.

“We will target 250 five to 18-year-old kids every year. Ten percent of these kids will receive scholarships.”

It took about four years for the Indonesian company to earn the Barcelona Escola franchise, said Arif. “We were quite aggressive in attracting Barcelona to look into Indonesia. Initially, Barca said that Indonesia was never on its radar.

“With many proposals from other countries, Barcelona became interested in our business concept.”

FC Barcelona chief marketing officer Laurent Colette said he was excited about the progressing cooperation with Indonesia.

“Soccer is the most entertaining sport in the world, including in Indonesia,” said Colette. “For social media, Indonesia has the No. 1 fan base in the world with 2.5 million people, while in second place is Mexico with 1.4 million.

“We have to find ways to be close with Barcelona fans. That’s why I’m here to begin this long-term cooperation,” he added.

Colette promised to bring Messi, Carles Puyol, Andres Iniesta and Xavi Hernandez for a friendly match in Jakarta as soon as possible.

“It won’t be easy to arrange for them to come to Jakarta with their tight [competition] schedule, but I will fight for it,” he added.

Colette added that he could not wait to see Indonesian kids playing the sport with Barcelona’s values, such as respect for opponents, effort, success and teamwork.

So far, Barcelona has established six official schools in the following locations: Fukuoka, Japan; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Egypt; Kuwait; Lima, Peru and Warsaw, Poland.