A Delhi Boy's Introduction and Observations on Indian Football (Part 1/2)

I am a “Dilli ka Ladka”, which basically means that every weekend, I can be found in one of the NCR’s various Hookah bars watching either cricket or the Barclays Premier League. It also means that Indian Football is just about as interesting as Business Studies.

Over time, I started watching Indian Football, not because I was a crazy fan of it, but because I was bored and had nothing else to do. Over time, I did become a crazy fan of it, and even earned the nickname, “Chhetri” for my non stop attempts to copy Chhetri’s back heel goal against Vietnam, on the field and off it.

When India was playing the AFC Challenge Cup in 2008, was when I actually started paying attention to football in India. That tournament was being played at the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad. What I saw was a stadium that looked excellent, until it started to rain. Then things started to get bad, and by bad I mean that they were literally playing in what looked like what a park becomes on Holi.

Gachibowli Stadium

Then, when the teams, the AFC and the AIFF had had enough, they shifted the final to the Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi. I decided to go and watch the game and what I saw surprised me completely. A jam packed stadium full of crazy fans chanting INDIA!INDIA!. This came as a stark contrast to what I had seen during the games in Hyderabad, which was a maximum of 1000 people in a massive looking stadium. Chhetri scored a hattrick in that game and we were just amazed as to how we could beat the Tajiks by 4 goals to 1 when we were the team being dubbed as underdogs. We had qualified for the Asian Cup!

Then after a lull of about a year, my football coach and other guys at practice started getting excited about something and thats when I found out that the Nehru Cup was going on. The first game I saw at the Ambedkar was Syria against some other team and at half time, there were not more than a hundred people in the stadium. I said to myself, “ye mein kahan aa gaya.” I then went to an India-Krygystan game, where there were many more like me. Mostly school and college guys with a few babu type people joining in at half time (probably after work). India won that game quite easily and I decided not attend the rest of the games but the final, which turned out to be a cracker.

It was India vs Syria, and the pre-match comments made by the latter’s gaffer were basically that India were a terrible side and they could beat us with 7 men. Sigh, if only he knew of the events about to unfold.

I reached the stadium well in time at 5:30pm (for a 6:30 kick-off) thinking that,“abhi toh koi nahin aaya hoga!”. Did I realize how wrong I was. There was a line about a mile long. The tickets probably sold out too, as at 6pm the ticket booth (more of a tiny window) was closed. That witnessed the rise of the great Indian entrepreneurial spirit. Blackies made a killing in the parking lot that night, as fans were willing to pay about triple the price of the ticket. While standing in line, I could hear massive cheers from inside the stadium, it even started raining lightly and then the most unexpected thing happened. There was a buzz circulating that people had started to climb the wall into the the Kotla next door. When I finally got to my seat (or my step), it turned out to be true. You could actually see a few hundred people inside the Ferozshah Kotla, and by half time more had started going in. The match was fantastic. Renedy scored a wonderful free-kick and at the end of regulation time, it was 1-1. Then came the penalties. Mehraj missed one, but other than that I recall, everybody scored. Subrata Paul pulled off some superb saves, and with the tournament winning save, the crowd went crazy. Chants of Subrata! Subrata! and India! India! followed. People were jumping up and down, hugging each other and just going mad. Even Indian Filmstar Salman Khan, who was in the stands for this particular game, seemed overjoyed. Even his bodyguards were somehow resisting the urge to jump and sing like everyone else in the stadium. Subrata Paul made his mark in history that day and was quite rightly judged the best goalkeeper in the entire tournament.

Salman Khan at the stadium

Following this game I started to think of the massive potential that football has in our country. The fans, who come to support our team in large numbers for every game, even when the game is held in a venue that is quite disconnected from the entire city, despite being in the middle of it. Our goalkeeper, playing in India has become such a man to watch. Just think, with proper and regular quality football, what he could have become. The enormous presence of our captain (ex- now), in the field with 3-4 people marking him for all free kicks and 2 people trying to tackle him whenever he goes on one of those jaw dropping runs of his. I look back and think, if only they had better luck. Alas, it seems as if they were born to be wasted.