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It was January 20, 2014 – at around 7 PM. 23 of us met at Yeshwantpur Railway Station for what would be our first away trip to watch Bengaluru FC in action. Nearly all of us had attended nearly every home game at the Bangalore Football Stadium, but we were very keen to realise how it’d be to support our team at a stadium, far away from home.
What followed was a colourful – sometimes tiresome – trip to God’s Own Country to watch BFC in game at a town called Manjeri in the district of Malappuram. Manjeri is a place known for its admiration for football, and saw packed houses throughout the duration of the Federation Cup. Bengaluru and India’s captain Sunil Chhetri was so impressed with the crowd at the stadium that he has advocated the venue for an international game featuring the Indian national team.
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We spent the initial part of our train journey trying to figure out our seat numbers and even successfully managed to exchange seats with a couple of people so that our group was as tightly knit as possible.
Out of the 23, there was one girl – Ayeshni Dasgupta. She was probably the only woman in the Manjeri stadium too. Sarver Iqbal was easily the most interactive person amongst our group. His energy throughout the trip was something to be admired.
Photo Courtesy – Anushruth Manchi
Once we found ourselves settled in the train – led by Anoop Adiga – we started noting down some new chants that we could possibly recite at Manjeri. A few other people in the train even started conversing with us, and some thought we were BFC players and were keen to get a glimpse of Sunil Chhetri, the only player they knew from the club. Needless to say, we were all a little amused by all this.
Whilst most folks in the trains went to sleep, we moved away to the end of the bogeys to find space and continued discussing new chants. The topic slowly moved on to European football where we discussed David Moyes, the Ballon d’Or, Jose Mourinho, Nicklas Bendtner and so on. Vachan Dev – a Bangalore football loyalist – also told us about his away trips to watch HAL in action.
As the train drove into midnight, we started dozing off one by one, and before we could even manage a couple of hours of sleep, we were at Tirrur in Malapurram district. We had booked a dormitory at a near-by hotel to accommodate the lot of us so that we could rest for a couple of hours and freshen up before travelling to Manjeri. A special mention goes to Ashwin Das, who turned out to be the official translator for the trip. The trip without him could have possibly been a mess.
At the dorm, a senior figure amongst the travelling fans – Ashok Godi – unveiled a 10×10 metre BFC banner, which was prepared all by himself. Everyone present were in awe of his work and rightly so. A few placards were prepared by the extremely talented Srivastsav, with special attention diverted to Chhetri, Robin Singh and the gaffer Ashley Westwood.
The logo was entirely painted by Ashok
We quickly got done with breakfast, and we were all set. Next stop – MANJERI!
It took us around 2 hours (which seemed like eternity in the humid Kerala climate) to reach the town of Manjeri. Some of our fans got acclimated with the local people on the bus despite language proving to be a bit of a barrier. Once we reached the town, we went out for lunch – a few preferring some beer to go with it.
At around 4 PM, we finally made it to the stadium. We entered the stadium with help from Kunaal Majgaonkar, BFC’s media manager who was very supportive. We chose a good spot – right behind the dug outs – to watch the games from.
The crowd slowly started filling in, and most of them seemed quite fascinated by us. I’m not sure if they saw us as celebrities or clowns, but a lot of them seemed very keen to take pictures with us. We were all quite overwhelmed by the situation.
We watched the Sporting Club de Goa vs Rangdajied United game with keen interest as our fate in the tournament depended a lot on the outcome of that encounter. Sporting won the 2-0, and suddenly we were in a must-win encounter against East Bengal. A win against The Red and Gold Brigade is something we hadn’t been able to achieve during our two I-League fixtures against them this season.
Photo taken by a Malayalam news daily
During the fag end of the Sporting game, our players came out to do their routine pre-match exercises to huge cheers from the crowd. The players seemed very appreciative with nearly all of them acknowledging and applauding us, something that pleased everyone a great deal.
Before the start of the much anticipated game, a few of our fans got their faces painted in BFC colours. The paint was bought by Vinu, who happens to already sport a BFC tattoo on his foreman. He is clearly keen on a life-time appointment with the club.
By the time the match began, the stadium was jam-packed. There was hardly any room for anyone to even move a muscle whilst being seated. The authorities did not make an official announcement on the attendance, but I’d say there were easily more than 15,000 people at the stadium.
The match commenced, and we tried to be as clamorous as possible, hoping to inspire the team to a victory that would see us reach the next round of the tournament. The locals were initially supportive of us and cheered on BFC! We seem to have also garnered some support due to the presence of Chhetri in our ranks, who is a popular figure in most parts of the country.
The first half was quite subdued and after a goalless half of football, there was nervous tension building around the stadium. We knew BFC had to score or else our first foray at the Federation Cup would end at the first hurdle.
The second half got underway, and we started off radiantly. A few minutes into the second half, Chhetri was fouled in the box by Arnab Mondal who wasvery lucky to stay on the pitch as he was the last East Bengal defender. Chhetri and a few others in blue were infuriated by the referee’s decision to not send Mondal off.
The success rate from penalties in matches involving Bengaluru has been awfully low all season. While Pawan Kumar has saved a good percentage of penalties he has faced, we’ve missed our fair share from 12 yards out. True to form, Chhetri stepped up and saw his tame penalty easily saved by EB’s goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh.
This was also the time when the crowd for some reason turned against us and started going against BFC. It was a strange predicament, to say the least.
Bengaluru FC took time to recoup from the miss and the team from Kolkata made full use of our loss in concentration as Chidi Edeh’s strike from almost 30 yards out found its way into the back of the net as Pawan Kumar was rooted to the spot. 1-0 to East Bengal and the crowd around us erupted!
We needed two goals to qualify from that quagmire and we knew it’d be a very difficult task against a team that hadn’t conceded against us in more than two and a half matches.
The goal didn’t dampen our spirits though as we continued chanting loud, trying our best to egg on the team to fight back. But it was not to be – as just minutes later – Chidi extended East Bengal’s lead with another long-range shot to leave us all heart-broken.
This was when the crowd became even ruder, chanting “Go, home BFC!” and other chants on similar lines. But we had no complains. After all, we all knew that we were a few hundred kilometres away from home, and they had every right to support whichever team they liked.
We won another penalty in the dying embers of the game, which looked like it could provide us with some sort of solace. Sean Rooney stepped up, but unfortunately he put too much power into the shot and our day became even worse as we saw his spot kick sail over the bar. And for the third time in four months, we were beaten by East Bengal by a 2-0 margin.
Photo Courtesy – Anushruth Manchi
After the game, we had to walk for around a mile – with dejected looks on our faces – to catch a few taxis which would take us to Nilambur – the location from where we’d catch a KSTRC bus back to Bangalore.
Once we got to Nilambur, a few of us started playing football at what was a rather isolated bus stand. Abhiram, Vardhan and Rakshith were made to run around in circles much to the delectation of everyone else.
On the morning of January 22, we reached the Satellite Bus Stand on Mysore Road and parted our own ways. We might have lost the football match, but all of us were filled with pride that we are part of something special – an Indian football club that is so devoted to its fans like no other.
The rest who made the journey, besides myself: Anoop Adiga, Sarver Iqbal, Anushruth Manchi, Ashok Godi, Vachan Dev, Vinu, Ayeshni Dasgupta, Terry Larsen, Pratik Rao, Akhil Infant, Ashwin Das, Rakshith, Aniruddha Prabhu, Srivastav, Athul Ramachandran, Abhiram Ramachandran, Chaitana Reddy, Shashank Aithal, Adithya Aithal, Vardhan Shenoy, Purushottam Kittane and Anvith Ekatti.
