Indians Have Played Football for Over 120 Years. There Are More Than a Billion of Us
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WRITTEN BY VIVEK MENEZES A NEW DAWN REBOOT Dempo Football Club PHOTOGRAPHED BY SIYA SinGH is on its way to being the dominant force in Indian football Indians have played football for over 120 years. There are more than a billion of us. And yet our national team is among the world’s worst, ranked lower than Ethiopia or Haiti. For decades, the beautiful game has looked breathtakingly ugly in this country... 000 — OCTOBER 2009 OCTOBER 2009 — 000 TRaiNING DAY REBOOT One of the problems Indian football faces is the lack of state-of-the- art training facilities RISING tiDE Dempo has bagged ... But in Goa, Dempo FC is three national titles over a five-year span, and has won regularly on the spearheading a revival. Asian circuit as well Their dream: to get India back into the World Cup. Have they gone nuts? LeaDER OF the PacK Coach Armando Colaço has been able to attract some of the top talent in the country to Dempo UNDER FLOODLIGHTS had been on top of the ball throughout boots, you might have expected more perception about the big picture.” Beijing in 2008, where the island state Real Madrid Club de Football, the team ON A FETID June the match, right at the heart of the cheers when you returned home. Cricket excepted, the annals of of Cuba won 24, and even famine-struck endorsed by FIFA as “the most success- night in Chennai, the best football action. And now he measured his steps Instead, he and his teammates got a Indian sports are a bleak catalogue of Ethiopia tallied seven. At Beijing, ful football club of the 20th century”. team ever assembled to play for Tamil back with uncanny calm. Boom! The tongue-lashing from Bob Houghton, the disappointments and humiliations. We the scattered nomads of Mongolia It was founded only in 1902, by which Nadu entered the 2009 Santosh Trophy ball angled beyond the desperate, plain-speaking veteran international are a nation of a billion, now accus- won four medals. That’s right, even time Mohun Bagan and other Calcutta semi-final with high expectations. Its diving Satish Kumar into the back of coach who has led the Indian national tomed to getting thrashed on the play- Mongolia – a country with a population teams had been around for many years. opponent, a depleted Goan team, was the net. Game over. team since 2006. Comparing Lawrence ing field, a nation that celebrates fourth- outnumbered by the Indians riding on Today, hardly anyone remembers that missing several veterans, and the home Instantly, a riot broke out. to Liverpool and England star Steven place finishes and glorifies bronze Mumbai’s trains at any given moment – it was football and Mohun Bagan that team smelled victory. With its confi- The disbelieving home crowd Gerrard, he thundered: “If you are medals the way the rest of the world finished high above India in the medal gave colonial India its real-life Lagaan dence boosted by a raucous, partisan rampaged in the stands, smashed the serious about qualifying for the World gets excited about actual victories. standings. It seems almost churlish to moment in 1911, when a team of bare- crowd, Tamil Nadu surged up-field windows of the press box and rained Cup, then you should forget playing This collective disgrace rotates point out that Beijing was India’s best footed natives beat the East Yorkshire constantly, the entire stadium baying missiles on to the field for more than nonsensical and stupid tournaments centrestage every Olympics, every Olympics ever. Regiment, firing two quick goals in hysterically for a goal. But scoreless 15 minutes. Three days later, with like the Santosh Trophy. Do you believe World Cup. That’s when global atten- Even in this morass of mediocrity, the last five minutes to win the Indian minutes ticked by, then half-time, and Lawrence again the key player, Goa Steven Gerrard will play for some tion turns to the same question that the steep decline of Indian football Football Association Shield. Witnesses then, at the very end of injury-time, won the Santosh Trophy in a penalty hotchpotch trophy at the end of the embarrasses and bedevils Indian sports stands out as a horror story. After all, reported a standing crowd of more than the fatigued defender Kali Allaudeen shoot-out (4-2) against West Bengal, season?” Grinding the point home, fans. Why has India not qualified? Why football developed strong roots in 60,000, deliriously singing “Vande pulled down substitute forward Francis leading the Times of India to exult, “The Houghton laid out the grim, inescap- does India always lose? Why has this India long before its popularity grew Mataram” for the full 90 minutes. The Fernandes in the goal mouth. A penalty heart and soul of Indian football is now able reality of Indian football. “After vast country won exactly five individ- in Europe and South America – our next day, Bengali journalist Achintya kick against Tamil Nadu. overwhelmingly Goan, anyone with 100 years of football, you are still 147 in ual medals across the last 50 years of Durand Cup (1888) is the third-oldest Sengupta wrote: “Mohun Bagan is not Up strolled Goa’s captain, the lean, a spirit of the beautiful game in their the world. You can sack the coach and Olympic competition? The sheer scale football trophy in the world, and many a football team. It is an oppressed coun- purposeful Climax Lawrence, and the veins will agree.” bring another one, but you will still be of the problem boggles the mind: South of our football clubs long predate the try, rolling in the dust, which has just stadium grew hushed. The midfielder If you were in Climax Lawrence’s 147. There is a need to change people’s Korea alone won 31 Olympic medals at existence of FIFA. Take Spain’s beloved started to raise its head.” 000 — OCTOBER 2009 OCTOBER 2009 — 000 REBOOT Well into the Sixties, India was an triumph after winning the AFC he first learned to love the game and up-and-coming football power rated Challenge Cup in 2008, a famous vic- their symbolism of all that’s wrong with among the best outside the West. Our tory that qualified India for the Asian India’s football infrastructure. “No guys qualified for the World Cup in Cup for the first time in a generation. one can tell me that we have less talent 1950 (but didn’t get to play because of “Of course the minister is wrong,” than other countries, but we don’t have a ban on bare feet in the competition), says Lawrence after a long pause. “And proper fields to play in and develop to then beat Iran to win the Asian Games I do feel very insulted. From childhood, international standards,” he says. “Now in 1951, and handily disposed of pow- I have dreamed of wearing the India that we have some facilities in Goa, I’m erful teams from Japan and Korea to uniform, playing for India in the World happy about it. But this is a small state – win again in 1962. Even more signifi- Cup. That’s why I work so hard, that is what about the millions of football play- cant was the hard-fought fourth-place why the whole team plays the game. ers in the rest of our country?” finish at the Melbourne Olympics in Those rankings are not a good way to After Gill’s sarcastic outburst in 1956, when India shocked the hosts 4-2, judge the sacrifices and effort we put in February, India’s coach angrily turned with Neville D’Souza (of Bombay and for Indian football.” the spotlight back on to the minister Assagao, Goa) scoring the first hat-trick Lawrence walks me around Navelim, himself. “Why doesn’t the minister by an Asian in tournament history. pointing with pride to the untended, produce facilities for the game instead After the local newspapers bemoaned of being cynical?” said a visibly irate the “fluke”, Australia was granted an Bob Houghton. “I want to ask him why unofficial rematch. Then the “little he doesn’t prepare facilities for us. We Indians” drubbed the proto-Socceroos have zero facilities here. People don’t all over again, with the imperious, un- believe it when I tell them that we are stoppable D’Souza hammering in two struggling for a decent field to practise more goals. on. Considering the facilities that we Over 50 years later, that team’s per- have, we are doing pretty well.” He con- formance is still seen as the pinnacle of The difference tinued, “Last time, we had to practise Indian football. At a ceremony honour- in Gurgaon. Every day, after 5.30, dif- ing the surviving players from the 1956 between me and the ferent groups of boys would swarm the team last February, the Union Sports best players in the world pitch for cricket practice, even throwing Minister MS Gill used their achieve- is that their game is one- the javelin. Have you ever heard of an ments to ridicule the current state of international football side in any part of football in India, along with Lawrence’s touch. How can anyone the world training under such circum- generation of national players. “I don’t play like that here? stances?” Soon after, Houghton flew know what is happening with Indian the team to Dubai and Spain, forced to football,” opined Gill. “Sometimes unkempt paddy fields where he first seek training facilities abroad because they are ranked 140th in the world, learned to play football with his father, India’s sole international-standard sometimes 120th.