I am not an avid follower of football, as in I don’t or never follow club championships and the likes. Hence Arsenal is as powerful as Manchester United to me, and perhaps Real Madrid is better than both of them (all of which can be wrong). But there’s something about world cup football though that makes me glued to the TV from the start to the finish – something about its enormous scope, the countries involved, the sheer number of fans involved – all of this are enough to attract me. I love football as a sport, most definitely, and believe it’s the best game man invented as well, but ahem, to watch on TV. – At least for me!
Anyways, going back in time some few moons ago (well make that many moons), I faintly recall that the first time I actually played football was in seventh grade. SEVENTH?! You may ask – “What did I do till then?†– To which my answer would be a shameless – “Nothingâ€. I had better things to do than play football, cricket, or umm, just play. I had important things to figure out: Will Chamataka succeed in his nefarious plans? Or will Doobdoob fail him again? Football could wait – there were more pressing matters at hand. Raaka had just run away with Chacha Chaudary’s wife – will Sabu and Chacha rescue them?!
Ok I made the last one up – but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been like that. Anyhow, I was introduced to the lovely game of football in Pune. In Pune, I had a huge circle of friends living in the same colony; some older than us, some younger than us, but always hanging out together. Every evening we used to meet up on our building terrace, where the game in fashion would be commenced – usually it would be cricket (yeah, on terrace), or hand tennis, or yes, football.
I think it was the 1990 world cup season when as the game of fashion went, we decided to play football. The funny thing about it was, though I was the only guy who did not know what football was or how it was played, I was the only one in the building who had a real football with me – the ones that they actually used in matches. (Why the studious Suyog had a football in the first place is a different story).
Anyhow as we settled on the terrace and teams were formed, came the crucial time to select the roles of respective players. It didn’t matter – anyone could be forward, midfield or defender – as once the game started, everyone was bound to bump into one another looking for the ball. Nonetheless it was important to define roles. (Some of our friends, older than us, had “deeper†knowledge of football than we weasels. Hence, the object of role defining was for the older guys to get challenging roles, while weaklings and younger were relegated to smaller roles).
Roles also helped us blame one another in case there was a goal from opposing side. We could argue that defender should have been defending the ball rather trying to flick the ball and take to opposite side. It worked the other way too – defender could safely blame forward. The forward was lousy defender and actually blocked the defender from defending – no wonder goals were scored.
Defining roles had yet another advantage though. Nobody wanted to be the goalie. And I didn’t know what forward, center of defender meant – which meant I got to don the role of the goalie. A goalies job is the most important one in football, so I was told, and it would be a challenge to accept the role of a goalie I was made to believe. Not being the athletic type, a goalie’s job was just what I wanted. After all how many times will a guy from other side try to score anyways?
But my hopes were short lived – remember we were playing on terrace? Hence there was only so much space for your football field – which was a good 60×60 feet in all. That meant the role of the goalie was extremely challenging at both ends. You see, at any given time of the match anyone could be aiming for any goal in any direction. The ball was always in vicinity; which also explains why once the game started everyone would bump into each other jumping on the same ball – there was just not enough space! You could walk 10 feet away from the game and wait your whole life but the ball wouldn’t come to you.
And goals were scored in plenty too. I don’t remember any single digit scorecard from those days. It was difficult to figure out who was a lousier goalie amongst the two appointed (the second of whom agreed to be goalie after much haggling about how he would be forward in the next match if he held the score of the opposing team below 10, which unfortunately never happened, hence he was relegated to that role forever. I on the other hand, did not pursue such ambitions, so no one cared).
Nonetheless I received my dose of flak too – usually the team that had me the goalie had a greater chance of losing the match. My team would have wished that I never played with them, but for a crucial detail:
Only I had the “super†football (as they called), and certainly, there was no football if there was no Suyog.
Hence various ideas were proposed. Initially it was agreed that we two goalies would switch places each match. Which resulted in opposing team always winning – it worked out well except that when we started playing “advanced†series, i.e. best of three matches (Yeah, how? Well after our endless double digit (21-18, 30-25, you get the picture) matches, we decided that any team that scored 11 goals first would win. No, that still didn’t help the other goalie from getting into forward. May be he did improve, or had just given up any hopes. Or may be he was as lousy as me…)
Anyhow the problem was apparent: any team that fielded me as a goalie in the first match had an undue disadvantage of fielding me twice – the first and the third match – which also meant the other team, won 2-1. That was not acceptable they figured, after several hard fought matches went the other way, and there was no “real†competition in matches, as the eventual outcome depended on which side I was on.
So they did the next best thing – they “Subbed†me. Which opened another can of worms about who would sub me? After much haggling and discussions, it was decided that the guy who scored least number of goals (poor defender, poor younger people) would be goalies on a turn by turn basis. Initially I used to be subbed fairly late in the game, but as time went by I began to be subbed almost after the first goal.
That improved their performance by heaps – suddenly matches became competitive, and playing time extended by 10 minutes (yeah, remember the other goalie was lousy too? – he was next in line after me to be subbed). Nonetheless, my role further was relegated to getting the football from the road if my team mate hit the football from the terrace and it landed on the ground. That was the pits.
And then one day – something unfortunate happened. For all that “super†football image that my football had gathered, it burst. Yes it burst. Resulting in comments that my football was just as good as any other, and it was certainly not the “matches†variety – after all matches football didn’t burst, would they?. How? Why? When? Who? None of it really matters, nor do I remember it now, but I remember getting angry at everyone and everybody around about it, and how their reckless behavior had made the football go phuus, and more importantly, how not having me in the team resulted into all this. This was my chance at getting at them. The once glorious football laid now, a deflated piece.
Secretly I was also thankful that it ended the unending misery of me having to get the football from the road all the time. Around that time Tennis season started, and well, all of us got into the tennis mode. That was that, for another year of football.
Following year we played football, but my importance had substantially decreased, now that I didn’t have the “super†football. Not that I made any specific attempts to improve my skill set to merit a selection either. Funnily enough though, the next year out of pity of having been a goalie for the entire last year, I was allowed to be a defender.
Which pretty much meant I did nothing and usually spent time chatting with the goalie and wait for things to happen. There was no way I was going rush into the melee, and I figured if there was any way I could touch a football “during play†(yes, emphasis on those words), it would have to be in that position.
Sadly, even that didn’t happen that year. With the end of that year, my glorious affair with football ended too.
After those two years, I took on a more prominent role for myself in the grand scheme of things in football.
I became that – cheering, shouting hoarse, and booing the opposite team – fan, of my team.
I still am.