Bengal’s Slum Soccer teams have dreams in their eyes, but no sponsors to back them

Rags-to-riches stories are not hard to find in football. From the legendary Pele to a host of current-day sensations like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Angel di Maria, Alexis Sanchez, Franck Ribery and Cristiano Ronaldo, to name a few, football has rendered all their lives a fairy-tale-like touch.

Football not only helped these aforementioned stars by giving them the opportunity to live luxurious lives by pursuing it as a profession, but also preventing them from going socially wayward, which, in the case of most people living in ghettos and squalor, is a fait accompli.

It is one thing to admire and marvel at such stories on pages and television, and a different thing altogether to witness a fairy-tale being scripted in your own city.

For a third-world country with such a large youth population like India, it is imperative that more and more private organizations and sports-loving philanthropists come forward to promote indigenous talent. The need is more so in non-cricketing sports like football, athletics, hockey, kabaddi, etcetera, whilst crores and crores of rupees are splurged at the IPL auction every year to hire the services of T20 mercenaries.

Working towards such a goal is AIFF Match Commissioner Aparup Chakraborty, whose brainchild—Liga Prodigio—was founded in December 2018 with the fundamental aim to imbibe a passion for football in a generation, which has been encroached upon by the overbearing attraction of smartphones and video games.

Operating with eight teams in two age groups—Under-9 and Under-11—the inaugural edition of Liga Prodigio has already garnered an encouraging response from the bigwigs of Kolkata Maidan.

Another notable project which Chakraborty is whole-heartedly associated with is Slum Soccer. As the name quite clearly suggests, the initiative is dedicated towards unearthing football talents from slums and economically backward sections of the country and bringing them together under a system, which would facilitate them to become professional footballers in future.

Exemplifying the impact of such a noble initiative is Malda’s Rabi Mallick, who was the only player from West Bengal to be picked for the Indian squad which travelled to Mexico for the Homeless World Cup in November last year.

Having earned the experience of being a part of a World Cup squad, Rabi is currently taking part in the SONY Slum Soccer Championship—the premier competition for homeless footballers which got underway in Mumbai on February 13.

Comprising thirty-two teams from all across India and three neighbouring countries of India (Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh), the tournament promises to uphold what the ‘beautiful game‘ is all about: free of class, race, creed and religion. But Chakroborty’s dream of seeing both the men’s and the women’s teams from Bengal doing well in the competition has had major obstacles in the form of lack of sponsorship.

"The men’s team bagged a bronze last year, which made me hopeful that our sponsorship worries would soon come to an end. However, despite such a remarkable performance, no one has stepped forward to donate even five thousand rupees for the team. It is my responsibility to look after the well-being of these boys and girls, and it really plagues me that I am not able to feed them well owing to the dearth of funds," Chakraborty rues.

Not one to be weighed down by such testing circumstances, Chakraborty is hopeful that the Bengal contingent will put up a valiant display in the competition. "I am sure if we give in our hundred percent [effort] in the competition, much will change. 'Hope' and 'dream'—these two things have been my biggest motivations," he adds, waiting for more heads to join him in his vision one day, so that the world, in the words of John Lennon, 'will be as one'.