FIFA World Cup 2018 has important lessons for India — if players, administrators keep an open mind
Dreams that don’t let one sleep create legends.
On the night of 25 June 1983, a 10-year-old boy with a curly mop of hair — he was a John McEnroe fan — danced in the streets of Mumbai (then Bombay) along with his friends to celebrate India’s unexpected triumph in the Prudential World Cup. He wasn’t a cricket fan then but dreamt that he would one day hold the World Cup trophy, just like Kapil Dev had done at Lord’s that fateful night.
It took 28 years for Sachin Tendulkar’s dream to manifest but it did eventually, on the night of 2 April 2011. In the interim, he made a place for himself in cricket’s hall of fame and came to be known as one of the finest — if not the best — batsmen of all time. He was also conferred with the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award.
Over the cool January evenings of 1982, a lanky 14 year-old sat watching India play in the hockey World Cup — held in Mumbai — on the community television set in Khadki’s Ordnance Factory. It did not matter to him that India finished fifth in the tournament; he had eyes only for the mercurial Indian forward, Mohammed Shahid. He dreamt of playing like the ‘magician’ he had seen on TV.
That World Cup had inspired Dhanraj Pillai to emulate his idol and to represent India at four Olympics, four World Cups, four Champions’ Trophy tournaments and four Asiads. He is said to be one of the finest forwards the world has seen and has been conferred with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, besides the Padma Shri.
Do we see an adolescent somewhere in India’s small towns dreaming of becoming the next Cristiano Ronaldo or the next Lionel Messi, inspired by the FIFA Football World Cup matches of 2018? When Tendulkar hung up his boots a few years ago, Virat Kohli — who is now one of the best batsmen in the world — in an emotional moment, is said to have walked over to him and handed him a small gift. “My dad had given me these threads. He had asked me to present them to the person who inspires me,” he told the master batsman. Do we see an Indian footballer saying that to either Messi or Ronaldo in the coming years?
“The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances,” said Aristotle. MS Dhoni came from a humble background, grew up in a small town and rose above his circumstances to become a legend. “I would watch Tendulkar bat on TV and put it off when he got out,” says Dhoni. It was ironic that India won the World Cup of 2011 with Dhoni as skipper and Tendulkar there to guide and inspire him.
Indian football officials would be sadly mistaken if they thought that the Indian Super League or the I-League would produce world-class footballers in India. Sadio Mane of Senegal became an international star despite his father forbidding him to play football as a child. Mo Salah of Egypt would travel three hours every day from his hometown of Nagrig to practice with his club team, El Mokawloon. These are just two out of the many stories of commitment and determination in the World Cup of 2018.
There may be so many youngsters all over the country, in small towns and big, who would want to be like Salah and Mane. It is here that the grassroots programme of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has to start working. Producing great players is the key to booking a place in the top 50 in FIFA rankings; not just running cash-rich leagues.
Singapore, one of the most advanced city-states in the world, is ranked around 170 in world football. It has a larger population than Croatia, Serbia and Iceland, all of whom qualified for World Cup 2018. The nation’s football league began in 1996 with the aim of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It failed miserably, despite the fact that star footballers were imported into the league and some of the top Asian clubs were allowed to participate, to make it more competitive. Where did Singapore fail? In inspiring young Singaporeans to dream of becoming the best footballers in the world!
Does the AIFF see a message there? I just hope they do.
Supposedly the best 32 teams on this planet participate in the World Cup finals. But once the group stage of the tournament begins, the FIFA rankings go for a toss. This is as true of World Cup 2018, as it has been in most of the past tournaments. How else could one account for host Russia’s (ranked 70th) trouncing of 67th ranked Saudi Arabia 5-0 and the drubbing of Egypt 3-1, ranked 45th? Or, for that matter, Japan, ranked 61st, qualifying for the round of 16 by beating Colombia ranked 16th and playing out a draw with Senegal ranked 27th?
In fact, the biggest surprise of the 2018 World Cup came from 57th ranked South Korea, who beat world champs, Germany 2-0 in a crucial tie that eliminated the holders at the group stage. Therefore, once a team qualifies for the World Cup finals, everything rests on form and strategy. Reputations count for naught.
India could take a cue from these matches. Sunil Chhetri’s team may not be amongst the top rankers, at present, in Asia. But that shouldn’t stop them from beating higher ranked teams with better planning, grit and steadfastness. If the South Koreans could counter-punch the high-flying Germans, why can’t the Indians surprise a few Asian teams? It would only take reinventing, strategising and finding new ways of doing things.
Four years ago, hosts Brazil were trounced 7-1 by the Germans in the World Cup semi-finals. The match was seen as a ‘national shame’ in Brazil. In the World Cup of 2018, coach Tite, after studying the playing style of the best teams in Europe, ditched the Brazilian individualistic and free-flowing game and introduced an energetic game that focused on creating numeric advantages in key areas of the pitch. The Brazilians are now through to the round of 16 and are looking good for a place in the finals on July 15.
If the Brazilians — the five-time world champions — can change their style of play and not feel bad about it, surely the Indians could do with some fresh thinking as far as playing formations and strategy are concerned; perhaps, even a change of coaching styles!
There is a lot India could learn from the World Cup of 2018. The players, coaches and the administrators need to have an open mind. What’s more important, they need to have a heart big enough to accept changes.
I totally agree with @mohammed_87hassan why should govt waste tax payers money on useless team selected by Constantine just to get some cut money from some agency's.
Bibiano's boys are scheduled to take on Thailand U16 team one more time mid-July in addition to playing practice games against two local clubs when they visit the country before a week long stopover in Kuala Lampur for a friendly against Malaysian U 16 team towards the end of the tour.
How a village in Haryana dumped cricket for football
A once cricket crazy village near Gurugram, Ghamroj switched to the beautiful game four years ago and has since produced several talented footballers.
It was a cool, cloudy, evening in June 2014, and Mahesh Raghav reached the cricket ground in Ghamroj village of Haryana at his usual time to coach the village’s young cricketers. But, much to his dismay, none of his 50 trainees turned up. He waited for an hour before walking back home, angry and hurt.
This had never happened in the 10 years he had been coaching the village children. The next day he visited some of them to find out what had kept them from attending the regular training session.
“What I discovered baffled me. It was the time of the FIFA football World Cup, and they had secretly bought footballs and had been practicing the game in the mornings without I getting a whiff of it,” says Raghav, sitting at his house in Ghamroj the window of whose large living-cum-bedroom provides a beautiful view of the Aravallis.
“They flatly told me that they were no longer interested in cricket and would rather play football. But they wanted to retain me as their sports coach. So, I had to choose between cricket and football, I chose the latter,” Raghav said.
Over the next few days, Raghav, a famous cricketer in his area, and his pupils donated their cricket bats to youngsters in a neighbouring village. “I had recently bought the bat for ₹25,000, but I knew I would have to give it up if we had to pursue football seriously,” he says.
Four years on, Ghamroj, about 15 km from Gurugram, has earned fame, far and wide, as a village of footballers. There is hardly a youngster in the village without a football — and you can see many of them dribbling a ball in its well-paved streets. In a short span of time, the once-cricket crazy village has produced footballers who have played both at the state and national level and also in the Youth I-League for clubs such as Delhi United.
The village’s switch from cricket to football has all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler — there was no footballing infrastructure in the village, no coach, no training equipment, no football pitch to begin with. But what the village youngsters surely had was a determination to play the game.
Spurred on by Raghav, the villagers pooled funds — about ₹ 3 lakh — and bought football gear and equipment such as gloves, net, goal posts, ladder, markers, and corner flags. And the cricket ground was converted into a football field. “We got our initial training from Youtube. We watched top players such as Messi and Neymar for hours, trying to understand their game,” says Yashvir, 18, who played in the I-league last year and hopes to play for India.
Two years back, the players of the village also formed a club — M2M football club — with its own logo and jerseys. The club currently plays in rural tournaments and if the trophies that adorn the desk of Raghav are any indication, the team has been on a winning spree.
Raghav, who otherwise works as a property dealer and also took to Youtube to learn football, devotes eight hours every day training the village kids and taking care of their sporting needs. “The idea behind the club was to play football in a professional way. Our club hopes to play in the I-league soon. We are trying to affiliate the club to Haryana Football Association,” he says.
In 2016, impressed by the village’s passion for football, the Delhi United football club decided to train Ghamroj’s footballers and plans to make it ‘a model football village’. “Their footballers have great talent, which is amazing considering that the village adopted football recently.
Our club wishes to set up a residential academy to help develop football in the area,” says Krishan Kumar Ekka, head coach, Delhi United Football Club’s football academy, who trained Ghamroj’s footballers one-and-a-half years back. “Today, I can say Ghamroj has the best team in Gurugram and one of the best in Haryana.”
While the village has many talented football players, Vikas, 21, who earlier this year played for the Haryana state team in Santosh trophy, is the young man everyone is convinced will bring sporting glory to the village. The walls of his spartan living room are festooned with medals he has won in various tournaments.
“We are hopeful our son will soon play for the country and change the course of our destiny,” says Kamlesh Devi, his mother, showing off the many trophies her son has won. The conversation is interrupted by the grunts of buffaloes outside.
Football players of Ghamroj have their own favourite teams and favourite heroes, and these days they remain awake late into the night to watch the FIFA World Cup.
Deepanshu 18, a Real Madrid fan who started playing football four years ago, says his role model is Cristiano Ronaldo, whom he calls the best player in the world, but Yashveer, his fellow footballer, and a Barcelona fan, is quick to contradict him. “The best player is Messi, he is a magician, ” he says, watching a FIFA cup match on LED TV. Deepanshu is not convinced, but he does not want to contest the claim — at least not in front of us.
In fact, it is the rise of Iceland over the past few years that gives these budding footballers hope of India’s chances of making it to the FIFA World Cup. Iceland, whose FIFA rating in 2012 was only 131, is now playing the World Cup; so there is no reason, they feel, why India, whose current FIFA ranking at 97 is better than that of Iceland in 2012, cannot play the World Cup by 2026.
They believe that cricket is fast losing its popularity in the country. “A time is not far when like in England and West Indies, in India too cricket will become a game of the people of a certain vintage. cricket will eventually lose to football,” says Deepanshu. There are many children in the village who can talk about Messi, but know little about Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Kamlesh, for example, can talk pretty eloquently about why Neymar is such a great player. “I love his crazy speed dribbling,” he says.
Ghamroj’s football dreams got a sudden, unexpected jolt in April this year when the Gurugram forest department took over the football field surrounded by the Aravillis — it is easily one of the most picturesque sports grounds in the country — saying the land came under protected forest area. But the villagers say the land belongs to the Panchayat, which had allowed them to develop a football field.
About 100 footballers sat on a hunger strike to reclaim their land. The strike was broken only after a minister in the Haryana government promised that the ground would be returned to them. But the promise, the villagers say, has not been kept and they have had to develop another football ground. “This is panchayat land. Our footballers have become victims of petty local politics. This incident also illustrates the attitude of the government to sports. ” says Rajbir Chauhan, a panchayat member.
It is 5 pm, and the sky is overcast with a hint of rain. Raghav’s training session is scheduled for 5.30pm. He has arrived early on the day to show us the place. Unlike that June day four years back, when he found himself alone in the middle of the cricket pitch waiting for his trainees, he is delighted to see everyone has arrived much earlier. “I am sure now my trainees will never disappear like they did four years back. Football indeed has much greater pull than cricket,” says Raghav.
Khalid Jamil - a forgotten hero amidst Kolkata's mess?
The man who helped underdogs Aizawl FC to a miraculous title victory only a year ago is presently looking for a new challenge...
Fourteen months ago, Aizawl FC and head coach Khalid Jamil effectuated India's own 'Leicester moment'.
On April 30, 2017, Aizawl became the first north-eastern side to clinch I-League title and head coach Khalid Jamil ended the season as the hero they've all been waiting for.
India termed Jamil a genius for working his magic at Aizawl in his first ever season in charge of the north eastern club. There were talks of a Bollywood movie being made on Jamil's triumph. However, less than 14 months later, Jamil finds himself without a job in India's top flight league.
And the coaching wizard opted to make a move to Kolkata's East Bengal.
Khalid Jamil's move to East Bengal was not surprising as East Bengal were desperate to win their first ever I-League title while the former was to get a massive financial windfall.
What was surprising about the move was that people genuinely expected it to work well. This was a club that had appointed eight different managers in nine years.
People demanded a repeat of his success at Aizawl, a league win that the Red and Golds have been craving for 14 years. His campaign started with the club successfully retaining the Calcutta Football League (CFL). However, the club had a poor start to their I-League season as they only had a point from the first two matches, which included a defeat to Mohun Bagan.
In the second leg of the derby, East Bengal produced one of the most hapless displays witnessed in recent times. What made matters worse was that they could have won the I-League title but a defeat to Gokulam and a draw against Shillong Lajong hampered their hopes once again.
The club management appointed Subhash Bhowmick to work alongside the head coach ahead of the Super Cup, a decision which was a sign of the problems ahead for Jamil.
Jamil went from being the hero at Aizawl to an alleged villain at East Bengal within a year, a sight that was painful to witness. He spent the last few months at East Bengal as the helpless head coach who was chaperoned by a supposedly 'know-it-all' technical director in Bhowmick. The club lost the Super Cup final to Bengaluru FC and Jamil was soon left without a job.
Despite the issues he came across in Kolkata, Jamil has not taken anything personally, "I don't have any problem (with East Bengal). Everything is fine."
Jamil's situation is a sad reality in Indian football. Good things are quickly forgotten and a few months in Kolkata flushed the memories of a magnificent title win down the drain.
Jamil denied reports of talks over his next destination and said, in typical style and tone, "No, I am not in talks with any club at the moment. Ramzan just got over, I am relaxing now."
Will Khalid Jamil be able to prove his doubters wrong and succeed at the top level again? For that he needs a job first.
everyone should all these small level coaches/players when you go to big teams either deliver or perish or have such a power you can be heard,dont go to teams where Names are bigger than you
Comments
FIFA World Cup 2018 has important lessons for India — if players, administrators keep an open mind
Dreams that don’t let one sleep create legends.
On the night of 25 June 1983, a 10-year-old boy with a curly mop of hair — he was a John McEnroe fan — danced in the streets of Mumbai (then Bombay) along with his friends to celebrate India’s unexpected triumph in the Prudential World Cup. He wasn’t a cricket fan then but dreamt that he would one day hold the World Cup trophy, just like Kapil Dev had done at Lord’s that fateful night.
It took 28 years for Sachin Tendulkar’s dream to manifest but it did eventually, on the night of 2 April 2011. In the interim, he made a place for himself in cricket’s hall of fame and came to be known as one of the finest — if not the best — batsmen of all time. He was also conferred with the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award.
Over the cool January evenings of 1982, a lanky 14 year-old sat watching India play in the hockey World Cup — held in Mumbai — on the community television set in Khadki’s Ordnance Factory. It did not matter to him that India finished fifth in the tournament; he had eyes only for the mercurial Indian forward, Mohammed Shahid. He dreamt of playing like the ‘magician’ he had seen on TV.
That World Cup had inspired Dhanraj Pillai to emulate his idol and to represent India at four Olympics, four World Cups, four Champions’ Trophy tournaments and four Asiads. He is said to be one of the finest forwards the world has seen and has been conferred with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, besides the Padma Shri.
Do we see an adolescent somewhere in India’s small towns dreaming of becoming the next Cristiano Ronaldo or the next Lionel Messi, inspired by the FIFA Football World Cup matches of 2018? When Tendulkar hung up his boots a few years ago, Virat Kohli — who is now one of the best batsmen in the world — in an emotional moment, is said to have walked over to him and handed him a small gift. “My dad had given me these threads. He had asked me to present them to the person who inspires me,” he told the master batsman. Do we see an Indian footballer saying that to either Messi or Ronaldo in the coming years?
“The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances,” said Aristotle. MS Dhoni came from a humble background, grew up in a small town and rose above his circumstances to become a legend. “I would watch Tendulkar bat on TV and put it off when he got out,” says Dhoni. It was ironic that India won the World Cup of 2011 with Dhoni as skipper and Tendulkar there to guide and inspire him.
Indian football officials would be sadly mistaken if they thought that the Indian Super League or the I-League would produce world-class footballers in India. Sadio Mane of Senegal became an international star despite his father forbidding him to play football as a child. Mo Salah of Egypt would travel three hours every day from his hometown of Nagrig to practice with his club team, El Mokawloon. These are just two out of the many stories of commitment and determination in the World Cup of 2018.
There may be so many youngsters all over the country, in small towns and big, who would want to be like Salah and Mane. It is here that the grassroots programme of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has to start working. Producing great players is the key to booking a place in the top 50 in FIFA rankings; not just running cash-rich leagues.
Singapore, one of the most advanced city-states in the world, is ranked around 170 in world football. It has a larger population than Croatia, Serbia and Iceland, all of whom qualified for World Cup 2018. The nation’s football league began in 1996 with the aim of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It failed miserably, despite the fact that star footballers were imported into the league and some of the top Asian clubs were allowed to participate, to make it more competitive. Where did Singapore fail? In inspiring young Singaporeans to dream of becoming the best footballers in the world!
Does the AIFF see a message there? I just hope they do.
Supposedly the best 32 teams on this planet participate in the World Cup finals. But once the group stage of the tournament begins, the FIFA rankings go for a toss. This is as true of World Cup 2018, as it has been in most of the past tournaments. How else could one account for host Russia’s (ranked 70th) trouncing of 67th ranked Saudi Arabia 5-0 and the drubbing of Egypt 3-1, ranked 45th? Or, for that matter, Japan, ranked 61st, qualifying for the round of 16 by beating Colombia ranked 16th and playing out a draw with Senegal ranked 27th?
In fact, the biggest surprise of the 2018 World Cup came from 57th ranked South Korea, who beat world champs, Germany 2-0 in a crucial tie that eliminated the holders at the group stage. Therefore, once a team qualifies for the World Cup finals, everything rests on form and strategy. Reputations count for naught.
India could take a cue from these matches. Sunil Chhetri’s team may not be amongst the top rankers, at present, in Asia. But that shouldn’t stop them from beating higher ranked teams with better planning, grit and steadfastness. If the South Koreans could counter-punch the high-flying Germans, why can’t the Indians surprise a few Asian teams? It would only take reinventing, strategising and finding new ways of doing things.
Four years ago, hosts Brazil were trounced 7-1 by the Germans in the World Cup semi-finals. The match was seen as a ‘national shame’ in Brazil. In the World Cup of 2018, coach Tite, after studying the playing style of the best teams in Europe, ditched the Brazilian individualistic and free-flowing game and introduced an energetic game that focused on creating numeric advantages in key areas of the pitch. The Brazilians are now through to the round of 16 and are looking good for a place in the finals on July 15.
If the Brazilians — the five-time world champions — can change their style of play and not feel bad about it, surely the Indians could do with some fresh thinking as far as playing formations and strategy are concerned; perhaps, even a change of coaching styles!
There is a lot India could learn from the World Cup of 2018. The players, coaches and the administrators need to have an open mind. What’s more important, they need to have a heart big enough to accept changes.
July 3rd China
July 5th Thailand
July 7th DPR Korea
Bibiano's boys are scheduled to take on Thailand U16 team one more time mid-July in addition to playing practice games against two local clubs when they visit the country before a week long stopover in Kuala Lampur for a friendly against Malaysian U 16 team towards the end of the tour.
How a village in Haryana dumped cricket for football
A once cricket crazy village near Gurugram, Ghamroj switched to the beautiful game four years ago and has since produced several talented footballers.
It was a cool, cloudy, evening in June 2014, and Mahesh Raghav reached the cricket ground in Ghamroj village of Haryana at his usual time to coach the village’s young cricketers. But, much to his dismay, none of his 50 trainees turned up. He waited for an hour before walking back home, angry and hurt.
This had never happened in the 10 years he had been coaching the village children. The next day he visited some of them to find out what had kept them from attending the regular training session.
“What I discovered baffled me. It was the time of the FIFA football World Cup, and they had secretly bought footballs and had been practicing the game in the mornings without I getting a whiff of it,” says Raghav, sitting at his house in Ghamroj the window of whose large living-cum-bedroom provides a beautiful view of the Aravallis.
“They flatly told me that they were no longer interested in cricket and would rather play football. But they wanted to retain me as their sports coach. So, I had to choose between cricket and football, I chose the latter,” Raghav said.
Over the next few days, Raghav, a famous cricketer in his area, and his pupils donated their cricket bats to youngsters in a neighbouring village. “I had recently bought the bat for ₹25,000, but I knew I would have to give it up if we had to pursue football seriously,” he says.
Four years on, Ghamroj, about 15 km from Gurugram, has earned fame, far and wide, as a village of footballers. There is hardly a youngster in the village without a football — and you can see many of them dribbling a ball in its well-paved streets. In a short span of time, the once-cricket crazy village has produced footballers who have played both at the state and national level and also in the Youth I-League for clubs such as Delhi United.
The village’s switch from cricket to football has all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler — there was no footballing infrastructure in the village, no coach, no training equipment, no football pitch to begin with. But what the village youngsters surely had was a determination to play the game.
Spurred on by Raghav, the villagers pooled funds — about ₹ 3 lakh — and bought football gear and equipment such as gloves, net, goal posts, ladder, markers, and corner flags. And the cricket ground was converted into a football field. “We got our initial training from Youtube. We watched top players such as Messi and Neymar for hours, trying to understand their game,” says Yashvir, 18, who played in the I-league last year and hopes to play for India.
Two years back, the players of the village also formed a club — M2M football club — with its own logo and jerseys. The club currently plays in rural tournaments and if the trophies that adorn the desk of Raghav are any indication, the team has been on a winning spree.
Raghav, who otherwise works as a property dealer and also took to Youtube to learn football, devotes eight hours every day training the village kids and taking care of their sporting needs. “The idea behind the club was to play football in a professional way. Our club hopes to play in the I-league soon. We are trying to affiliate the club to Haryana Football Association,” he says.
In 2016, impressed by the village’s passion for football, the Delhi United football club decided to train Ghamroj’s footballers and plans to make it ‘a model football village’. “Their footballers have great talent, which is amazing considering that the village adopted football recently.
Our club wishes to set up a residential academy to help develop football in the area,” says Krishan Kumar Ekka, head coach, Delhi United Football Club’s football academy, who trained Ghamroj’s footballers one-and-a-half years back. “Today, I can say Ghamroj has the best team in Gurugram and one of the best in Haryana.”
While the village has many talented football players, Vikas, 21, who earlier this year played for the Haryana state team in Santosh trophy, is the young man everyone is convinced will bring sporting glory to the village. The walls of his spartan living room are festooned with medals he has won in various tournaments.
“We are hopeful our son will soon play for the country and change the course of our destiny,” says Kamlesh Devi, his mother, showing off the many trophies her son has won. The conversation is interrupted by the grunts of buffaloes outside.
Football players of Ghamroj have their own favourite teams and favourite heroes, and these days they remain awake late into the night to watch the FIFA World Cup.
Deepanshu 18, a Real Madrid fan who started playing football four years ago, says his role model is Cristiano Ronaldo, whom he calls the best player in the world, but Yashveer, his fellow footballer, and a Barcelona fan, is quick to contradict him. “The best player is Messi, he is a magician, ” he says, watching a FIFA cup match on LED TV. Deepanshu is not convinced, but he does not want to contest the claim — at least not in front of us.
In fact, it is the rise of Iceland over the past few years that gives these budding footballers hope of India’s chances of making it to the FIFA World Cup. Iceland, whose FIFA rating in 2012 was only 131, is now playing the World Cup; so there is no reason, they feel, why India, whose current FIFA ranking at 97 is better than that of Iceland in 2012, cannot play the World Cup by 2026.
They believe that cricket is fast losing its popularity in the country. “A time is not far when like in England and West Indies, in India too cricket will become a game of the people of a certain vintage. cricket will eventually lose to football,” says Deepanshu. There are many children in the village who can talk about Messi, but know little about Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Kamlesh, for example, can talk pretty eloquently about why Neymar is such a great player. “I love his crazy speed dribbling,” he says.
Ghamroj’s football dreams got a sudden, unexpected jolt in April this year when the Gurugram forest department took over the football field surrounded by the Aravillis — it is easily one of the most picturesque sports grounds in the country — saying the land came under protected forest area. But the villagers say the land belongs to the Panchayat, which had allowed them to develop a football field.
About 100 footballers sat on a hunger strike to reclaim their land. The strike was broken only after a minister in the Haryana government promised that the ground would be returned to them. But the promise, the villagers say, has not been kept and they have had to develop another football ground. “This is panchayat land. Our footballers have become victims of petty local politics. This incident also illustrates the attitude of the government to sports. ” says Rajbir Chauhan, a panchayat member.
It is 5 pm, and the sky is overcast with a hint of rain. Raghav’s training session is scheduled for 5.30pm. He has arrived early on the day to show us the place. Unlike that June day four years back, when he found himself alone in the middle of the cricket pitch waiting for his trainees, he is delighted to see everyone has arrived much earlier. “I am sure now my trainees will never disappear like they did four years back. Football indeed has much greater pull than cricket,” says Raghav.
Khalid Jamil - a forgotten hero amidst Kolkata's mess?
Fourteen months ago, Aizawl FC and head coach Khalid Jamil effectuated India's own 'Leicester moment'.
On April 30, 2017, Aizawl became the first north-eastern side to clinch I-League title and head coach Khalid Jamil ended the season as the hero they've all been waiting for.
India termed Jamil a genius for working his magic at Aizawl in his first ever season in charge of the north eastern club. There were talks of a Bollywood movie being made on Jamil's triumph. However, less than 14 months later, Jamil finds himself without a job in India's top flight league.And the coaching wizard opted to make a move to Kolkata's East Bengal.
Khalid Jamil's move to East Bengal was not surprising as East Bengal were desperate to win their first ever I-League title while the former was to get a massive financial windfall.
What was surprising about the move was that people genuinely expected it to work well. This was a club that had appointed eight different managers in nine years.
People demanded a repeat of his success at Aizawl, a league win that the Red and Golds have been craving for 14 years. His campaign started with the club successfully retaining the Calcutta Football League (CFL). However, the club had a poor start to their I-League season as they only had a point from the first two matches, which included a defeat to Mohun Bagan.
In the second leg of the derby, East Bengal produced one of the most hapless displays witnessed in recent times. What made matters worse was that they could have won the I-League title but a defeat to Gokulam and a draw against Shillong Lajong hampered their hopes once again.
The club management appointed Subhash Bhowmick to work alongside the head coach ahead of the Super Cup, a decision which was a sign of the problems ahead for Jamil.
Jamil went from being the hero at Aizawl to an alleged villain at East Bengal within a year, a sight that was painful to witness. He spent the last few months at East Bengal as the helpless head coach who was chaperoned by a supposedly 'know-it-all' technical director in Bhowmick. The club lost the Super Cup final to Bengaluru FC and Jamil was soon left without a job.
Despite the issues he came across in Kolkata, Jamil has not taken anything personally, "I don't have any problem (with East Bengal). Everything is fine."
Jamil's situation is a sad reality in Indian football. Good things are quickly forgotten and a few months in Kolkata flushed the memories of a magnificent title win down the drain.
Jamil denied reports of talks over his next destination and said, in typical style and tone, "No, I am not in talks with any club at the moment. Ramzan just got over, I am relaxing now."
Will Khalid Jamil be able to prove his doubters wrong and succeed at the top level again? For that he needs a job first.