With Indian Super League taking flight, Indian football can become big in 10-15 years

By Shamya Dasgupta

He’s a World Cupper twice over, and scored 47 goals from 88 internationals for Portugal – it was a record when he retired in 2006. Pauleta is also a legend at Paris St Germain, where he played 168 games, scoring 76 times. International stars small and big, active and retired, have been dropping in around these parts with increasing frequency of late.

Clearly, the clubs or brands they represent are looking to tap into the huge, and growing, Indian market. When they come, a Diego Forlan or a Robert Pires, obviously there is excitement. Money is made, publicity generated. Journalists sit at press conferences, take home souvenirs and write reports about the goings-on they witnessed. With Pauleta, though, PSG and the organisers went one step better.

Why not get a few scribes to play against Pauleta? I, for one, was sold. A five-aside game. Pauleta and a bunch of kids from Bangalore’s Greenwood High International School trained by PSG youth coach Sacha Lizambard on one side, and a group of rag-tag, beer-bellied, (mostly) greying journalists on the other. Quite a match-up!

It was always going to be one-sided. Somewhat like Portugal playing India. And it was – 6-0 it ended. Pauleta played all of it. It was the closest any of us were going to get to play ‘international’ football. Pauleta was at the heart of everything they did. He scored thrice and set up two of the other goals. Did he play seriously? Well, obviously not. He ran moderately hard, passed strongly, dribbled well … just enough to ensure he didn’t let himself down in front of his fans.

Still, it was too much for us weekend players. I do have photographic evidence of stopping him twice, but the scoreline is evidence of him having got past me, and the rest of us, much more often.

The interesting story, though, was about the boys we played against. Far too often, big clubs from overseas come to India, launch an academy or two in collaboration with someone or the other, and then go away. With PSG, partly because they aren’t one of the popular English or Spanish clubs – which means that our market may mean just that bit more to them – and partly because they might actually want to make a difference, the plan is different.

Lizambard has the experience of coaching at various age-group levels within PSG and at PSG academies around the world. He is going to stay in India – Bangalore and Delhi – for an extended period, be physically a part of the development of the trainees at the schools PSG has tied up with. “It is a handicap, we know,” says Fabian Allegre, director of brand development at PSG, responding to my comment that it’s the Manchester Uniteds and Barcelonas that are top of the pile in India and Ligue 1 clubs aren’t top of mind.

“But we can take advantage of that and make things change. If 3000 kids in these schools play with us, they will go back home and talk about PSG with their friends. And we want to make a change in terms of getting a lot of kids to play the PSG way, get more and more kids to play better. And also train coaches, so that 50 coaches are there to train kids after we are gone.”

Our presswallahs team might not be the best competition they have faced, but the Greenwood kids were seriously impressive. It’s the magic of playing together for a long time, and playing together as a team, with a style of play determining what they do. The passing was quick and precise, the off-the-ball moves were smart, and the coordination was super.

Quite a far cry from the school teams we played with or against back in Kolkata over two decades back, where there was a lot of aimless kicking, a few individuals that stood out from the rest, and very little passing and team play. There’s hope then for Indian football on the whole. With interest spreading, more and more foreign clubs taking interest, the Indian Super League taking flight and much else, maybe Indian football can become big in the next 10-15 years. Perhaps it will be a viable career for young Indian boys and girls. And if, maybe, Zlatan Ibrahimovic can swing by and have a kickabout with the likes of me next time, there won’t be any dearth of reporting on the progress either.

The writer is Senior Editor, Wisden India