The “beautiful game”, football, has several beautiful moments. The most famous are known to billions of football fans.
But there are several moments which don't take place in stadiums grand enough to capture a large audience.
Moments for memories: Fans world over will always remember Ronaldo's bicycle kick
Such moments happen everywhere — but only those associated with them remember.
Here are some inspirational moments from the beautiful game in Mizoram — a land that's been mostly isolated from the rest of the country for decades, but has captured the imagination of the nation in recent years as a breeding ground of high-quality footballers.
Please note: These moments begin with the saying — "In Mizoram, you will find a football and a pair of football boots in every house."
Despite its relative isolation, Mizoram has become a breeding ground of high-quality footballers for India
Kicking British biases
Where in the rest of India, football was brought in by colonial British rulers, in Mizoram, it was the other way around.
The Mizo people travelled all the way to Europe to serve in the British army during the First World War, discovered the beautiful game in France and brought the game home after the war.
But, despite the services of the soldiers of the Lushai Labour Corps in the First World War, there was a general perception among the British that the Mizos were "not suitable" for recruitment to the Army — this perception was openly stated by Commandant WB Shakespeare of the Assam Rifles.
It was football that paved the way for the Mizos to enter the army.
The Mizos put into use what their soldiers learned in France — if football was good enough to assess their physical condition for recruitment into the Allied forces in England, then the game could be used as a benchmark for recruitment into the Assam Rifles.
The opportunity came in 1933, when the commandant of the Assam Rifles division of the British Army organised a football tournament in Aizawl.
The Assam Rifles were the heavy favourites to win.
But the final match was a historic sporting event for the Mizo people.
Thousands flocked to occupy the hill slopes around Lammual to catch a glimpse of the action. To their immense joy and pride, the team of Mizo youth defeated the fancied Assam Rifles — and dispelled all myths that the Mizos lacked strength, stamina and fitness to be soldiers.
At the presentation ceremony, Commandant Shakespeare withdrew his comments — he announced that the Mizos were as brave as the Gorkhas, who had achieved a legendary reputation world over for their valour.
In the days following the tournament, the first batch of more than fifty Mizos was recruited into the army.
Football thus averted a tragedy of "Shakespearean" dimensions.
Shakespearean tragedy averted: Assam Rifles welcomed its Mizo soldiers after the Mizos won a football game
Ain't no road long enough...
At that time, when club matches from around the world were not televised in India, the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain and the 1986 World Cup in Mexico were two opportunities for fans in India to glimpse world-class football.
Among these many fans was Lalvulliana, who taught in a government school in the little village of Khuangleng in Mizoram, about ten kilometres from the Indo-Myanmar border.
Unfortunately, there was not a single television set in his remote village then.
But this did not deter his spirits — he would travel two hundred and thirty three kilometres by road to Aizawl, to see the matches of his favourite team, Brazil, on TV sets at his acquaintances’ houses.
There too, people would tweak their television antennas to catch the signals from neighbouring Bangladesh’s broadcasts.
Lalvulliana's passion didn't stop there.
It is, of course, common for parents to name their child after a legend they admire — very rarely does the child live up to the reputation of his or her namesake.
Lalvulliana named his eldest son Zico after the Brazilian football legend (Red jersey)
Following the 1986 World Cup, Lalvulliana named his eldest son "Zico" after the nickname of the Brazilian football legend Arthur Antunes Coimbra. Also known as "White Pele", Brazilian Zico is regarded as one of the greatest attacking midfielders of all time.
Little did Lalvulliana know then that one day, his son Zico would lead Mizoram to its first national football title.
The little Zico grew up to be a fine footballer — in 2014, he was named captain of the Mizoram Team for the Santosh Trophy, the highest inter-state football tournament in India. Zico ended up as the top scorer of the tournament and won its first major football title at a national level.
Also known as "White Pele", Brazilian Zico is regarded as one of the greatest attacking midfielders of all time.
The other great tackle
Mizoram shares its borders with Myanmar and often, large volumes of drugs are smuggled into Indian territory through these borders. The easy availability of such drugs led to addiction among the Mizo youth in the 1990s. When a civil servant named Ronghinglova learned about his son’s drug addiction issues, the gentleman devised an ingenious plan.
Ronghinglova identified youngsters in his neighbourhood who had similar addiction issues and formed a football team with them. He provided support and motivated this team to play the game as hard as they could, so that they could qualify for competitions.
In time, the team went on to play in the prestigious Aizawl League.
Winning over the greatest odds
His son as well the other players didn’t only defeat their opponents.
They also defeated their own weakness.
Moments like these make the beautiful game even more beautiful.
Sudeva’s
Indian players who go to Spain and perform well there would be admitted
to a British school – to keep up their academics.
The likes of Sudeva charge anywhere between Rs 2.5-4 lakh per year.
AN INDIAN LINE-UP Residential sport schools scout for talent pan-India. Defenders come
from Punjab, Kashmir, Kerala, Haryana and Rajasthan, where children are
taller.
Wingers come mostly from the hills. “Children from the hills have a
higher number of white blood cells… they’re genetically better equipped
to run and cover the ground. They don’t get tired easily,” explains
Gupta.
“Midfielders
are the playmakers. They plan and pace the game … Children from
educated, working-class families make good midfielders,” he says.
Strikers and forwards mostly come from metros and top-tier cities.
“City-bred children are more selfish; they’re hunger for glory and are
extroverts. If trained well, they turn out to be good strikers,” is
Gupta’s explanation.
Sudeva also employs a yoga instructor
Gross Generalization
They can be dismissed as a Holiday Camp for Rich Kids !!!
In the same logic, a guy holding a calculator is the team statistician because he can calculate or a guy holding zandu balm can be physio, if that report is true never seen such an idiot
FIFA World Cup 2018: India's Lack Of Football Culture More To Do With Our Failings At Team Sport Than Infrastructural Issues
Argentina will play Iceland in the World Cup in Russia on Saturday. It will be a clash between the fifth ranked and 22nd ranked teams in the world. The interesting thing is that Iceland, which has a population of only three lakh people, was ranked 133 in the world, below India, till only two years or so ago. It defeated England on its way to play in the World Cup.
India is ranked 97 in the world and is not playing in the World Cup. In our qualifying round, we were grouped with Iran, Guam, Turkmenistan and Oman. India finished last in the group. Many of us hope that India will soon play well enough to be part of truly global sporting tournaments like the football World Cup and the Olympics. The question is, why we do not or cannot do what nations like Iceland and Cameroon have been able to.
In his recent column on the same subject, former India captain Baichung Bhutia had written, “As a first step, we need to grow the culture of football. It is a massive challenge in a country where cricket is a religion and other sporting disciplines are making deeper footprints but it is the culture of football that keeps football alive in South American and African countries which are not blessed with a wealth of resources.”
So why is this culture missing in our country? Let us first make a few observations about football in India. The first is that relatively recently, meaning the last 10 years, there has been a lot of interest in watching the sport’s European leagues. The followers of this are usually well-heeled, young urban Indians. Their interest is wide enough and valuable enough for India’s sports channels to broadcast the Premier League live. In fact, many of the games that cannot be seen live on TV in England are shown live in India. So our performance is not because of a lack of interest.
Second, India does not have good sporting infrastructure, and more specifically, there are not many high-quality football grounds. But this is also true, as Bhutia notes, of many African and Latin American nations that play better than us and are able to compete at the World Cup regularly and also produce players who are global heroes. It is also true of cricket. It is the road and gully cricket that is the norm in India, not the matches played in stadiums.
Football requires considerably less infrastructure and equipment than cricket, which makes it difficult to fully hold lack of infrastructure responsible for the lack of footballing culture.
The third observation is about where football is played in India. It is popular in pockets: Northeast, Goa, Kerala, West Bengal, and perhaps in one or two other places. It is not popular in the Hindi heartland.
The fourth thing is that this difference can be seen in the Indian squad. The players are mostly from the areas that are mentioned above. There is Fernandes and Borges and Gurung and Khongjee but no Sharma or Kohli.
The fifth thing is that for some reason, many of the same Indian places and the same Indian cultures that do well at hockey also do well at football. Like hockey, and unlike cricket, football is a team sport.
What do I mean by that? Of course cricket is also played between teams but there is a difference. Cricket is a start-stop sport. Every ball is an individual and independent event, between two main players (bowler and batsman) and possibly one or two other peripheral participants (fielder and non-striker).
Hockey, football and volleyball are different in that their structure is flowing. The full team on both sides is always involved in a way it is never in cricket. Individual genius is less important in flowing sports than in start-stop ones. Even in hockey, where India is ranked fairly high, our dominance has faded.
When it was a sport that was dependent on dazzling dribblers, we were supreme. When hockey became more passing-oriented, and therefore more of a team sport, with the introduction of artificial turf, our dominance declined.
And so we must conclude that it is not a lack of interest or infrastructure that can account for our performance in football. It is something else that holds us back in all real team sports, though it does not seem to stop us in individual ones like shooting, weightlifting, wrestling, tennis, badminton and boxing (where, as readers will have noticed, most of our international successes have come).
Till we fully analyse why this is so, we will not be able to arrive at an answer to the question Bhutia has posed: Why is the culture of football absent in our parts and what can be done to develop it?
Comments
The “beautiful game”, football, has several beautiful moments. The most famous are known to billions of football fans.
But there are several moments which don't take place in stadiums grand enough to capture a large audience.
Such moments happen everywhere — but only those associated with them remember.
Here are some inspirational moments from the beautiful game in Mizoram — a land that's been mostly isolated from the rest of the country for decades, but has captured the imagination of the nation in recent years as a breeding ground of high-quality footballers.
Please note: These moments begin with the saying — "In Mizoram, you will find a football and a pair of football boots in every house."
Kicking British biases
Where in the rest of India, football was brought in by colonial British rulers, in Mizoram, it was the other way around.
The Mizo people travelled all the way to Europe to serve in the British army during the First World War, discovered the beautiful game in France and brought the game home after the war.
But, despite the services of the soldiers of the Lushai Labour Corps in the First World War, there was a general perception among the British that the Mizos were "not suitable" for recruitment to the Army — this perception was openly stated by Commandant WB Shakespeare of the Assam Rifles.
It was football that paved the way for the Mizos to enter the army.
The Mizos put into use what their soldiers learned in France — if football was good enough to assess their physical condition for recruitment into the Allied forces in England, then the game could be used as a benchmark for recruitment into the Assam Rifles.
The opportunity came in 1933, when the commandant of the Assam Rifles division of the British Army organised a football tournament in Aizawl.
The Assam Rifles were the heavy favourites to win.
But the final match was a historic sporting event for the Mizo people.
Thousands flocked to occupy the hill slopes around Lammual to catch a glimpse of the action. To their immense joy and pride, the team of Mizo youth defeated the fancied Assam Rifles — and dispelled all myths that the Mizos lacked strength, stamina and fitness to be soldiers.
At the presentation ceremony, Commandant Shakespeare withdrew his comments — he announced that the Mizos were as brave as the Gorkhas, who had achieved a legendary reputation world over for their valour.
In the days following the tournament, the first batch of more than fifty Mizos was recruited into the army.
Football thus averted a tragedy of "Shakespearean" dimensions.
Ain't no road long enough...
At that time, when club matches from around the world were not televised in India, the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain and the 1986 World Cup in Mexico were two opportunities for fans in India to glimpse world-class football.
Among these many fans was Lalvulliana, who taught in a government school in the little village of Khuangleng in Mizoram, about ten kilometres from the Indo-Myanmar border.
Unfortunately, there was not a single television set in his remote village then.
But this did not deter his spirits — he would travel two hundred and thirty three kilometres by road to Aizawl, to see the matches of his favourite team, Brazil, on TV sets at his acquaintances’ houses.
There too, people would tweak their television antennas to catch the signals from neighbouring Bangladesh’s broadcasts.
Lalvulliana's passion didn't stop there.
It is, of course, common for parents to name their child after a legend they admire — very rarely does the child live up to the reputation of his or her namesake.
Following the 1986 World Cup, Lalvulliana named his eldest son "Zico" after the nickname of the Brazilian football legend Arthur Antunes Coimbra. Also known as "White Pele", Brazilian Zico is regarded as one of the greatest attacking midfielders of all time.
Little did Lalvulliana know then that one day, his son Zico would lead Mizoram to its first national football title.
The little Zico grew up to be a fine footballer — in 2014, he was named captain of the Mizoram Team for the Santosh Trophy, the highest inter-state football tournament in India. Zico ended up as the top scorer of the tournament and won its first major football title at a national level.
The other great tackle
Mizoram shares its borders with Myanmar and often, large volumes of drugs are smuggled into Indian territory through these borders. The easy availability of such drugs led to addiction among the Mizo youth in the 1990s. When a civil servant named Ronghinglova learned about his son’s drug addiction issues, the gentleman devised an ingenious plan.
Ronghinglova identified youngsters in his neighbourhood who had similar addiction issues and formed a football team with them. He provided support and motivated this team to play the game as hard as they could, so that they could qualify for competitions.
In time, the team went on to play in the prestigious Aizawl League.
His son as well the other players didn’t only defeat their opponents.
They also defeated their own weakness.
Moments like these make the beautiful game even more beautiful.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/sports/delhi-based-sudeva-fcs-acquisition-of-olimpic-de-xativa-is-another-step-in-indias-soccer-dream/articleshow/64580914.cms
Residential sport schools scout for talent pan-India. Defenders come from Punjab, Kashmir, Kerala, Haryana and Rajasthan, where children are taller.
Wingers come mostly from the hills. “Children from the hills have a higher number of white blood cells… they’re genetically better equipped to run and cover the ground. They don’t get tired easily,” explains Gupta.
Strikers and forwards mostly come from metros and top-tier cities. “City-bred children are more selfish; they’re hunger for glory and are extroverts. If trained well, they turn out to be good strikers,” is Gupta’s explanation.
FIFA World Cup 2018: India's Lack Of Football Culture More To Do With Our Failings At Team Sport Than Infrastructural Issues
Argentina will play Iceland in the World Cup in Russia on Saturday. It will be a clash between the fifth ranked and 22nd ranked teams in the world. The interesting thing is that Iceland, which has a population of only three lakh people, was ranked 133 in the world, below India, till only two years or so ago. It defeated England on its way to play in the World Cup.
India is ranked 97 in the world and is not playing in the World Cup. In our qualifying round, we were grouped with Iran, Guam, Turkmenistan and Oman. India finished last in the group. Many of us hope that India will soon play well enough to be part of truly global sporting tournaments like the football World Cup and the Olympics. The question is, why we do not or cannot do what nations like Iceland and Cameroon have been able to.
In his recent column on the same subject, former India captain Baichung Bhutia had written, “As a first step, we need to grow the culture of football. It is a massive challenge in a country where cricket is a religion and other sporting disciplines are making deeper footprints but it is the culture of football that keeps football alive in South American and African countries which are not blessed with a wealth of resources.”
So why is this culture missing in our country? Let us first make a few observations about football in India. The first is that relatively recently, meaning the last 10 years, there has been a lot of interest in watching the sport’s European leagues. The followers of this are usually well-heeled, young urban Indians. Their interest is wide enough and valuable enough for India’s sports channels to broadcast the Premier League live. In fact, many of the games that cannot be seen live on TV in England are shown live in India. So our performance is not because of a lack of interest.
Second, India does not have good sporting infrastructure, and more specifically, there are not many high-quality football grounds. But this is also true, as Bhutia notes, of many African and Latin American nations that play better than us and are able to compete at the World Cup regularly and also produce players who are global heroes. It is also true of cricket. It is the road and gully cricket that is the norm in India, not the matches played in stadiums.
Football requires considerably less infrastructure and equipment than cricket, which makes it difficult to fully hold lack of infrastructure responsible for the lack of footballing culture.
The third observation is about where football is played in India. It is popular in pockets: Northeast, Goa, Kerala, West Bengal, and perhaps in one or two other places. It is not popular in the Hindi heartland.
The fourth thing is that this difference can be seen in the Indian squad. The players are mostly from the areas that are mentioned above. There is Fernandes and Borges and Gurung and Khongjee but no Sharma or Kohli.
The fifth thing is that for some reason, many of the same Indian places and the same Indian cultures that do well at hockey also do well at football. Like hockey, and unlike cricket, football is a team sport.
What do I mean by that? Of course cricket is also played between teams but there is a difference. Cricket is a start-stop sport. Every ball is an individual and independent event, between two main players (bowler and batsman) and possibly one or two other peripheral participants (fielder and non-striker).
Hockey, football and volleyball are different in that their structure is flowing. The full team on both sides is always involved in a way it is never in cricket. Individual genius is less important in flowing sports than in start-stop ones. Even in hockey, where India is ranked fairly high, our dominance has faded.
When it was a sport that was dependent on dazzling dribblers, we were supreme. When hockey became more passing-oriented, and therefore more of a team sport, with the introduction of artificial turf, our dominance declined.
And so we must conclude that it is not a lack of interest or infrastructure that can account for our performance in football. It is something else that holds us back in all real team sports, though it does not seem to stop us in individual ones like shooting, weightlifting, wrestling, tennis, badminton and boxing (where, as readers will have noticed, most of our international successes have come).
Till we fully analyse why this is so, we will not be able to arrive at an answer to the question Bhutia has posed: Why is the culture of football absent in our parts and what can be done to develop it?
http://dlco.ussoccerda.com/sam/teams/index.php?team=1653928&player=74853055