Dempo schools ‘Home’ away from home

Which channel is showing this tournament in India?

After the high of India’s triumph in the AFC Challenge Cup, comes India’s greatest moment in Asian Club football. Dempo Sports Club have become the first Indian club to make the last four of the AFC Cup – Asia’s equivalent of the UEFA Cup. The club achieved this by scripting an amazing away win over Home United of Singapore.Here’s a full recount of how they got to this stage.

I am sure many Indian football fans like me gave this momentous game the slip. Well, time to make up for it and cheer Dempo to more glory. The semis begin on 7th Oct when Dempo take on Lebanese club Safa Sporting in the first away leg. The return leg is at home on the 21st of Oct.

But does anyone know which channel will be showing these games live in India? I haven’t a clue. Somebody please help me out here – for my sake as well as for all the others who care.

Go Dempo

P.S. - The 'Sports Blog : for the common fan' is now moving to a new home. Starting the second week of October, the common fan's views on the world of sports will be found on http://www.acommonfan.com/. Look forward to seeing you guys in our new home.

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Why are we Indians so bad at football – the mystery of 153 - part 2

This is part 2 of the article. You can read the first part here.

Indian parents and careers in sports

Indian parents play an extremely important role in defining the careers of their children. Usually their approach is to take the safest, most proven path to a great life i.e. through education. When the child is 16 or 18 and its time to make your first career related choice, the parent of a talented kid will look at the worst case scenario of a sporting career before letting his child take the sporting path. There is an exception if the parent is an extremely successful sportsperson (or associated in some other capacity) and is more open minded about sports as a career and can also groom and guide his child to improve his chances

Other than that the parent will only let his kin take up sports as a career if

• The child is extremely gifted at sports and has already made quite a name for himself by the time a decision has to be taken. He is certain to go all the way and have a wonderful career.
• The child comes from a poor background and has little chance of getting an education. In such a case, sport is the only way to get away from life’s miseries. The parent usually has no choice in this case. The poor kid will at least land up a decent job in the sports quota of a public company
• The child’s sporting achievements can actually improve his chances of getting a good education. This happens a lot with middle class families who know the ancillary benefits of sports like securing a college admission or a scholarship.
• The child excels at a sport which is adequately rewarding even for those who fail to reach the top of the pyramid and therefore there is no risk of failure

Now to understand why, other sports have an advantage over football when it comes to parental support.

Few footballers qualify for the first situation. It comes down to precocious talent and except for Baichung Bhutia; we haven’t had one in years. On the other hand look at the amount of junior talent in cricket, tennis, football, chess, golf, badminton and squash.

The second scenario is common to most sports including football in India. Football still has a slight disadvantage as compared to cricket, hockey, athletics and boxing as the large public entities like the services, railways and the police are active participants in these sports and recruit heavily but not so much in football. Sometime back there were two exceptions in Kerala Police and Punjab Police which had strong sides in the national arena and encouraged football a lot. Sadly for the sport, that is no longer the case.

The third scenario largely applies to sports which are popular in the US. A young golfer, tennis player or squash player has a great chance of getting a US scholarship based on his sporting achievements. The strong support system in the US gives the player a better chance of making it big. Additionally he has his US degree to fall back on if things don’t work out. Look at most of the top players in these sports in the recent past – Jeev Milkha Singh, Mahesh Bhupathi, and Shiv Kapur – they have all benefited from this option and so has their sport

The last option is available in sports where even the second and third rung talent can make decent money from the game. This can happen if the domestic structure is cash rich and players can make good money through playing/coaching/managing/scouting/reporting/commenting/amalyzing or if similar opportunities are available abroad.

Cricket and hockey players have been playing in the foreign leagues since ages and now there is good money in the domestic game as well. Golf is another sport which has a cash rich domestic circuit. Running a coaching academy is another money spinner for tennis and cricket players. Even chess has many prize money events and offers scope for coaching. But what about football. The only time you make money is when you play and only the top club stars make good money. The sport clearly lags behind cricket, hockey, tennis, golf, and chess when it comes to making a livelihood out of sport.

As we have seen, Indian parents don’t a have very good reason to let their children take up football as a career. At least most of the sports have one scenario in which the parent will encourage his child to go all the way.

Therefore the answer to my question is this

Indians are fundamentally not very well endowed to play the sport; have no system to nurture the precocious few; have a cultural issue which afflicts a team game like football; have no ‘real’ support for the game (our passion is misleading); have not developed a football identity in spite of having played the sport for so long; and most importantly our career planning mechanism usually vetoes football as a profession owing to its poor ‘livelihood quotient’.

The journey to 153 is now complete

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Why are we Indians so bad at football – the mystery of 153 - part 1

This article was originally published in the Advanc'edge magazine brought out by IMS and was written before India's stunning AFC Cup win. This is the first part of the article


The idea for this article came when a friend asked me this – why does a country where so many people stay up nights to watch and be passionately involved in football cannot attain global standards in the game

The simple answer would be that football is the most popular sport in the world and our passion for the game is nothing compared to the passion exhibited by fans in South America or Europe or even Africa for that matter. If there was some way to rank nations in terms of their passion for football, India’s ranking would be in the neighbourhood of their FIFA ranking of 153. Therefore my friend, we have nothing to complain about our failure to attain global standards as our passion for the game is not at par with global benchmarks.

But then , there is another side to it as well- we are a nation of 1.2 billion and even if a small percentage of the population was dedicated to the sport, we will have a large enough pool of players (more than the population of many nations) to be able to field a quality side.

Also the fervour for football in India compares favourably to most sports. A tournament in faraway Europe evoked such passions that national dailies were forced to give cricket news (involving the national team no less) second class treatment in favour of football news. Few sports can claim to have matched football in that regard but most of them can make another claim – India fares far better at them as compared to football. Therefore my friend’s original question can now be reframed as

A) Why are we ranked number 153 in football in spite of our huge population (and supposed ability to have a large pool of players) and all the passionate support for the game

Or

B) Why for all the passion, our football team fares poorly as compared to teams in many other sports which enjoy far less viewer interest?

Now for the answers. First the ones to do with the nature of the game itself

Football is a physically demanding sport

Top quality football requires a high level of stamina, strength, speed, fitness and agility – Indians are typically lacking in all of these. We typically fare better at sports whose physical demands are far less - like cricket

But how come we do a lot better at tennis and hockey which are also very physically demanding. Well we could have done a lot better at these sports if not for our physical ineptness. Our decline in both hockey and tennis has coincided with these two sports taking on a more physical nature. We have always depended on the dribble in hockey and on touch play in tennis

Run of the mill African players manage to become stars in Indian football owing to their vastly superior physical conditioning as compared to the Indians. Other sports where we have done well in the recent past – Chess, Golf, Shooting, Billiards - none of them are very physically demanding

Indians don’t have a lot of natural football talent

Extravagant talent can make up for lack of physical prowess and a lot of other things as well. Like it does in the case of the South Americans. The dribbling and juggling skills of average Brazilian kids would put International players from other nations to shame.

Sadly for us, we don’t have the natural talent to cover for our physical shortcomings. I have never seen an Indian player, not a single one, whose natural talent could take my breath away. The fact that there are more than a dozen Indian-origin players playing county cricket but a mere one (Michael Chopra) playing in the premiership is also proof of a genetic lack of talent.

As compared to football, we still mine outstanding talents in other sports – Vishy Anand in Chess, Sachin Tendulkar in Cricket and Dhanraj Pillay in Hockey. Very clearly, we aren’t naturally blessed to play the game of football.

These two reasons are primarily why India can never be placed in the top 40 of FIFA’s ranking. But we are ranked 153. So obviously there are other reasons which help us cover the distance from 40 to 153. Time to look at them now


The lack of good coaching infrastructure for young kids with talent for football

Suppose you are the father of talented young footballer in India. Where will you send him to hone his football skills when he is eight years old - A football coaching centre in your city? Chances are that unless you live in a Mumbai or a Kolkata, there will be no such centre available in your city. Your kid can either learn from you or pick up another sport. He will have a far better chance of sporting success if he was into cricket or tennis or chess or even golf for that matter.

So what does a lack of good early coaching do to a potential footballer?

The footballer will suffer from poor technique, all his life. And most Indians, even national and international players actually do. The next time you watch a national tournament or see the Indian team in action, watch the players struggle with the most basic stuff – trapping a ball cleanly, heading and executing a simple flat pass. Most players develop their own make shift technique and manage with it somehow, till, they get exposed by a technically superior opponent.

The footballer also suffers from lack of football intelligence. Football involves a lot in terms of formations, positional sense and tactics. The team is usually more or less, than the sum of its individual parts depending on how well it does in these departments. A good coach exposes his wards to all these different aspects of the game and prepares them to adapt to different situations in their future football life. Sadly, young Indian footballers are not so well educated.

The fact that football is a team game and not an individual sport makes it worse

Prakash Padukone went to Denmark and practised regularly with Morten Frost. Both players improved tremendously. In an individual sport you need just one good practise partner to improve. Now consider the case of a team sport like football.

First, your team needs to have a lot of good players for you to get better. You will never learn to become part of a cohesive unit unless you do that. And then for this cohesive unit to get better you need to play against good opponents. So, a young footballer needs to play with 21 equally talented players to improve in all aspects of the game. This could only happen at well run youth clubs or coaching academies. Sadly, young footballers can’t do what Eklavya did in the Mahabharata – practise alone. This problem is something which afflicts hockey also.

And then there is the problem we have as a nation when it comes to team sports

Fundamentally all team sports have a problem in India because as a nation we always aspire for individual glory and are rarely willing to sacrifice it for the greater good of the team. The only team sport where we have improved is cricket and that is hardly a team sport in the truest sense. The need for teamwork and synergy is far less in cricket.

But forget cricket, other true team sports like hockey also have some advantages over football

Hockey has an identity but football doesn’t

The whole hockey world and sports fans all across the country know that Indian Hockey teams play in a 5-3-2-1 formation. This attacking style is adopted by teams all over India; at all levels. This is the bedrock of Indian hockey. Young players grow up with this formation in mind.

On the other hand football has no identity in this country. Even the biggest football buffs would be hard-pressed to answer questions about India’s style of play or its formation on the field. And not just about the current crop; questions about more successful teams of the past will also be difficult to answer.

An identity is important as it gives the young sportsman a clear path of his sporting life ahead. A hockey player can settle in a playing position at a young position and will possibly live with it for the rest of his playing life. He gets accustomed to a style and is already living and breathing it by the time he comes to the senior level. An Indian footballer on the other hand never learns a system. Every successful football nation has an identity. Dutch kids take their first steps with ‘total football’ on their minds while Italians are imbibed with the principles of ‘catenaccio’ from an early age.

Sadly, we have no football identity of our own in spite of the long history of the sport in this country. Getting closer to 153

But what about all the passion. Well time for another harsh reality of Indian football

Indians are passionate about football but only of the kind played by the very best

We don’t love football as such. We love top quality football – the kind played in the World Cup or the Euro tournament or by the top clubs in Europe and South America. Our passion is a seasonal occurrence. We are not football romantics who would stop on the road to watch a bunch of kids run after a ball. Except for some ardent souls in West Bengal, Kerala, Goa and the North-east, we do not have any local affiliations. In Europe, fans are crazy about their local side, even if it is the worst side in their country. In that sense we are football connoisseurs (who appreciate the finest quality) and not football lovers who love the game itself.

The unadulterated madness for cricket has created a cricket revolution in this country. Football, sadly, will never see a revolution as the passion is selective and highly diluted. The influx of foreign leagues on TV has been a bane for the domestic game. Earlier football lovers looked forward to watching top domestic tournaments like the Durand Cup and Federation Cup. Now you reject it as sub-standard and don’t care

But, In spite of everything, 153 is unjustified. So, we now come to something which is critical to the popularity of any sport in this country – the livelihood factor of a sport. This is the final step to 153

The second part of this article is in the next post.

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All hail Indian Football, Indian Boxing and Indian Chess

This one is all about celebration. So please leave your skepticism at home. Forget what we had been doing as a nation of 1.2 billion. Just enjoy what we have done in the last one week.

Just when the heady feeling of basking in the feats of Jeev Milkha Singh, Abhinav Bindra and Saina Nehwal was wearing off, there was more sporting joy in store.

First the much maligned national football team capped off a memorable AFC Challenge Cup by routing the Tajiks in the final. Its probably Indian football's finest moment since I was born - and after years of joy with my favourite club side ( Man Utd) , I have reason to cheer for my national team. All the credit has been rightly bestowed upon coach Houghton - Indian football joins the bandwagon of sports which have benefited from having a top quality foreign coach and increased international exposure.

The same could have been said of Indian Hockey but alas. Rick Charlesworth who wasn't considered good enough to coach Indian will soon become coach of the Australian men's side - replacing Barry Dancer, a highly successful coach who won the Olympic gold and the Champions Trophy with Australia. So its fitting that Indian Football's high has coincided with Indian hockey's lowest point.

Then there was a landmark achievement in Chess. Dronavalli Harika and Abhijeet Gupta gave India the unique distinction of becoming the first nation to win both the women's and the men's individual title at the Junior World Championship. This is something which even the mighty Soviet Union could never manage. If only Chess could become part of the Olympics - we would become a permanent fixture in the medals tally.

And finally the most adrenalin rushing event happened in boxing. Three Indians and three super victories. Akhil Kumar set the tone by toppling a world champion and then Jitender and Vijender followed with comprehensive wins. And the best part is that these guys were bursting with confidence before the bouts and are setting their sights on nothing less than gold. The chances of a second medal are extremely high and I am keeping my fingers crossed. Like these boxers I also want gold.

While all this was going on there was a setback in tennis - the much heralded pair of Paes and Bhupathi failed in what was probably their last attempt at an Olympic medal together. But it hardly mattered to me. These guys only have themselves and their super inflated egos to blame for it. Their coming together , their success and their break-up will forever remain one of the biggest 'what ifs' of Indian sport.

We will talk about the 'what ifs' on some other day. This day is to celebrate the new stars of Indian sport. Forget cricket, tennis and hockey. Lets raise a toast to football, chess and boxing

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Note to budding footballers in India -Want to become a professional player – then do what the Kiwis do

In India, the path to becoming a professional footballer is a rather difficult one. Let’s not even get into what makes it difficult. I can probably write more than a few thousand words about it and we will still not be done. So we will concentrate on an alternate path – one which has been laid out by some footballers from New Zealand and is a lot easier than the current one.

This is what the Kiwi footballers have recently started doing.

They move to US Universities on a football scholarship. Play in the collegiate system and then try getting into the MLS. A good stint in the MLS brings them on the radar of the European clubs – not the big ones but more of the middle of the road variety – which is still far better than toiling in the obscurity of their domestic league or the A-League in Australia

This is why it works

Football is decently popular at the collegiate level in the US and there are enough scholarships on offer. A decent junior from New Zealand has a very good chance of winning a scholarship to one of the numerous universities. The competition is far less intense than what one will encounter at one of the coaching academies in Europe. The infrastructure, training and coaching facilities are world –class. But the competition is not too great – making it easy for someone with a modicum of talent to shine and get picked by an MLS club.

The college system serves as the main feeder for the MLS clubs and again there are plenty of opportunities. It’s far easier to get noticed by an MLS club when you have played in the US. Again the level of competition is nothing compared to the tough trials at European clubs. An MLS career in itself is good enough. If you are really good you have a chance to get noticed by European scouts. The MLS is flush with veterans from Europe who act as pseudo-scouts for their old clubs and also enrich a young player’s football intelligence with their experience.

You can end up getting a direct contract rather than going through the grind of trials. The competition is just good enough to help you improve and too tough to leave you frustrated.

The US collegiate system has already worked wonders for Indian Tennis and Golf and it could do the same for football as well.

The gulf between Indian players and their European or American counterparts starts to really swell around the age of 16 as fitness, stamina, coaching and exposure to quality competition starts becoming increasingly important in a players development. At around this age an Indian footballer still has a fighting chance to win a scholarship to the US. Once he gets there, he will have access to everything that players in the US have and players in India don’t – world-class coaching, fitness and training facilities. He can then compete on an even keel with footballers from other nations and win a spot on an MLS side. That would be more than anything that an Indian footballer has achieved till date. We can have football’s version of a Jeev Milkha Singh or a Mahesh Bhupathi. A path like this will appeal to those who get de-motivated by the road to becoming a professional footballer in India and its rewards.

The mantra is simple. Go the Kiwi way.

This article was originally published on www.goal.com

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