Interview with India U-17 football coach Nicolai Adam: "We need to make India a football powerhouse"

U-17 coach talks about the future of Indian football and the preparations for FIFA U-17 World Cup 2017

The sport of football is a tantalizing subject for a study on fan or crowd culture. For no other subject, is a more constant preoccupation in the physical lives of Indians. Like other heavily discussed topics, football is obsessively followed and talked about and created through the imagination in all sorts of narratives into our lives.

The sport often overshadowed by cricket, becomes the riddle as we try to approximate the exhilaration or freedom our bodies feel at play, while we also tally through it the body's wondrous evanescent victories and shattering defeats. We also like to read about it, in formats ranging from tabloid sports coverage to high literature.

Today’s following of the game is mostly based on the matches telecasted on TV or written about on the internet. However, behind this contemporary mutation of football narrative lays the bare habit of thronging in to a stadium, through which the contemporary fan's pre- occupations were born.

The footballing folklore can best be described as perplexing in the nation, from hosting the ISL which boasted of recording attendances better than most top European leagues, it has however regularly failed to attract audiences for the supposedly bigger tourneys.

So today, as we approach India’s first appearance in a FIFA World Cup, and that too at home, there is eminent excitement and enthusiasm.

Ever since the AIFF announced acquiring the rights to host the Under 17 tournament in 2017, there has been this hope of distortion of the state of inertia that fans have been in, and that is massively inspiring.

The team itself which shall take the field in 2 years time has been preparing hard and have been recently joined by new coach Nicolai Adam. The 39 year old, unveiled by the AIFF here in Delhi today has previously coached the Azerbaijan U-17 side and served as the International Football Development Advisor for the German FA.

In a tete a tete that followed, he shared his optimism about the event and the development of followership of the sport in general in our country - “We need to make India a football powerhouse and thus support from the masses is imperative. All of us, we, the team and you included need to promote and push the event as much as possible.”

Over what he has seen since arriving in Goa a week back, he added-“We think with the given resources, we have done an amazing job. Now we need to take it to the next level- perhaps come up with a team which will be challenging enough in the World Cup two and a half years from now.

We have shortlisted 20 players and they are all really good, but we need to test them a little more. The exposure trips later this year shall come handy thus. As I mentioned before, in 2 years time, we will have a squad which will be challenging the best of the best.

After all nothing beats the joy of winning at home.”

Like any other discipline, in this case football, fans have their own analytical perspective, but it often depends on their evaluation of the performative aspect of sport. If not anything else, the AIFF has been impressive in their approach to say the least.

Here is hoping Adam’s boys sustain the hype and get our masses to herald a new era, come 2017.