The World Cup tournament was due to start, and all over India sports fans were asking the question: "The World Cup? Is Sania Mirza playing?"
No, you clowns, it's football or soccer, and it happens to be the most popular sport in the world as determined by both the humongous numbers of sports fans as well as rioting in the stadiums. Some countries shut down entirely during the World Cup. Granted, our country shuts down for pretty much any excuse, including a full moon. But the World Cup really is a major international event — except, of course, in America, where it generates about the same amount of public enthusiasm and interest as reruns of Manoj Kumar movies.
I truly believe that, even though many Indians say they hate football, if they gave it a fair chance — if they took the time to actually watch a World Cup match or two — they would still hate football. I don't know why this is so, but apparently it's not going to change. I've given up arguing with guys who tell me how boring football is, but will happily spend five days watching a cricket test match in which 95 percent of the action consists of bowlers rubbing their groin with the ball and suggestive jargon such as “two fine legs, between a slip and a gully” from the commentators.
"So what," I hear many cricket fans scoffing. "Football still sucks. Nobody ever scores and the players are a bunch of weiners with ‘60’s hairstyles and names like 'Kaka' and wimps who fall down writhing in fake agony every time they come into contact with an opposing player or stray pollen."
Yes, they do dive. Not to single out any one player, but I hear that Oscar Director for “Slumdog” has offered a role in his next film to Keita for his award winning performance on the field.
I personally find the diving to be one of the more entertaining aspects of football, which is a wonderfully theatrical sport. But don't be fooled by the theatrics: Footballers are amazing athletes, this sport requires extraordinary toughness and stamina — and, at the international level, unbelievable skill.
I first played football in school, where we had 30 players per side and could kick the ball for an entire year without scoring a goal. This was in the '60s and our football matches consisted of guys standing around the field in our house colours having philosophical discussions about topics such as girls. Every now and then the ball might roll past; if it got close enough, you might try to kick it to one of the guys wearing a similar house colour, but you would never consider actually running after it. The goal-keeps did nothing at all; they just stood there picking their noses.
After school, football and I parted ways for several decades. Then, in 2006, with Indian television covering the world cup live, my friends and I, bought 40 cases of beer and partied right through to the finals. The world cup matches were also quite good. I believe the winner was either Italy or France. It’s still hazy.
This year I watched about half the games (those which aired during my waking hours), and stayed up agonizingly for the semis and the final, and it became abundantly clear that India needs to address the following if we ever hope to be competitive in world football.
1. Find, import, build, buy, grow or steal some footballers. It is blatantly obvious that our front line cannot compete with the world-class talent of European and South American teams. We don't have anybody who is fast or strong…… Baichung Bhutia is our only striker. When your midfielder is a guy named Climax Lawrence you need to rethink your strategy, and whatever happened to I.M.Vijayan?
2. Somebody go down to Spain and get a Spanish coach, then get our kids into football jerseys with a big Indian tri-colour plastered to the front of it. At the same time maybe it's time to shut the Pakistan border as we have plenty of cricket players…I think.
Playing football is immensely popular amongst kids so it's not like they aren't being exposed to it. In this country, football is still seen mainly as a game played by kids and unemployed youth who eventually outgrow it and take up traditional Indian sports such as minority bashing and eve teasing.
We all know that football will never be anything more than the fourth sport in this country and people will point to this as to why we cannot qualify for a World Cup let alone win one. This is total B.S.; fourth or fifth place still means you can get lakhs of viewers, especially with the right kinds of cheerleaders and Bollywood celebs in attendance.
Of course it will never be as popular as cricket or politics, but just consider the 1.2 billion plus Indian population as opposed to some of the countries who are in the World Cup with less than 10 % of that population, Uruguay’s population is less than 1%.
The way I see it even if only one-in-ten thousand kids are interested, India would have more talent than any other country to select from.
Indian football should be investing in youth programs. With the internet, satellite TV etc it's about time we start getting some good football in this country on TV because our kids know how to watch TV and play video games which is the first step to getting interested and eventually good.
I'm convinced that if the World Cup was every year India would be more competitive because this country does get into it for big events. It's just hard to follow Indian football which is so amateurish it’s like watching the equivalent of a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I would like to watch good football it's just hard to find an Indian team to root for.
But most importantly we need a coach who can teach our players to act because it's very obvious that if you can't grab your leg in abject pain and agony when a guy slides 3 metres away from you, you'll never compete on the big stage.
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