Warriors: Part - I

It is annoyingly pleasing when I think that only circumstantial social situations seem to be irking me into writing on this blog. Maybe some would feel I am defeating the purpose of a blog in the first place. But the way I look at it, I choose to use this space and my writing to express myself in a way I know best. As to my knowledge, there are thirteen followers for my blog and of those thirteen if I can succeed in getting even two to start thinking differently or atleast opening up their thought processes, then my job here will bear fruit. A significant purpose of my expression, communication and commentary will be accomplised.

Anyways, this is what ruffled me up this time.

With the Football World Cup under way and all the jazz around this mega-event, many people have sought humour in the apathy in Indian football and the Indian football team. There have been email and SMS jokes doing the rounds poking fun at them.
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Earlier this month, I was privileged to have met some players of our national football team. Besides having been a pleasure spending time with them and talking to them about the game and some aspects of their affairs with Indian football, there was a lot I got to learn about the present state of Indian football.

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Football, undoubtedly, is the world’s most widely played sport. This is the reason why the FIFA World Cup is the world’s largest sporting event. But in many lands, football is much more than a sport. It is a very intense binding factor for the masses.
Cricket too has a similar effect on our people, the only flaw being that this effect wears off as soon as the match ends - for after that, we are back to our quarreling multilingual diverse selves. Football, on the other hand, is an unbiased religion. It is a phenomenon believed in, worshiped and practiced - globally. In India, much to everyone’s shocked amusement, supposedly an approximate 48% of our population claim to be football fans. So that suggests that we Indians do love the game.

Then why the distaste and ridicule towards the Indian football team? There has been a lot of critical as well as satirical talk of the inability in sourcing a squad of eleven players from a population of over a billion. Have people forgotten that we DO have a full-fledged team with coach and all? And it isn’t that these guys lack talent or prowess. What they truly lack is support – financial, mental and social. The AIFF is like a distant under-privileged country cousin of the BCCI. The lack of support to the official body trickles down to the team which has to bear the brunt of this ill treatment.

Our teams do not have quality grounds to train on, have bare necessary training equipment, pathetic fitness support; and practically nil national support. So is expecting such teams to perform even justified on our part? When their own countrymen unaware of their existence, the officials representing them do not care and if they never get those desired opportunities to excel at the one thing they know to do best, how can they reach standards of international reckoning?

And still, despite all this, they still play, they still compete and they still win at levels at which they can. I respect these men and women.