Time to sleep...

Time travels in fast lane now-a-days, maybe I’m getting old!! Let us talk about the age some other time. I’m here to talk about Football, yes about this World Cup. I’m not an expert in football, I watch it as a sport enthusiast. So here we are after a month long 11 Billion USD extravagance.

With the Indian population, it’s not a surprise to know that India had the 2nd greatest Social Media engagement after Brazil during this World Cup. 

Hardcore Vs Newbies

When the World Cup started, all these EPL.. La Liga..Serie A, B, X, Y.. Z fans ridiculed about people who started watching football from this World Cup onwards, but later these newbies outnumbered the hardcore fans. The raise in TV ratings and the Social media engagement is proof. After all, football is not a difficult sport to understand, my 8-year cousin who started watching football a month before disallowed the Higuain goal as off-side as soon as he netted it in in the Finals.

I found some unique set of janthukkal (Some hardcore League Football fans). They started saying, “Hey! The quality of foodball in WorldCup is not so good compared to the major leagues in Europe.” Grrrrrrrr. 

Stamina of Indians

Another set of discussion happened about India not participating in the World Cup. It was as if people were caught in shock!. Every newspaper carried an article about Indian Football. Some even went on to say that Indians doesn’t have stamina and the body nature to play football. These mainstream media writers comfortably forgot about Field Hockey, which needs equal stamina of football. While the football world cup was happening not many knew that men’s Hockey WC was held and India finished 9th!. 

They also forgot about stamina in Test cricket, were you needed to stand 5 days in sun, if you can’t bowl-out Sanath Jayasuriya (Ask Anil Kumble on the 1997 Test) or the heroic stand by Rahul & VVS on Day 4th in 2001 Kolkata match. 

And they also failed to mention the Indian women’s National football team which is 50th in the world ranking (125 teams). So can we conclude Indian men don’t have stamina? As they say in the corporates it’s the “will-issue” not the “skill-issue”. And by the way we don’t want to worry where our Indian football stands. Every country has a passion towards a particular sport. Cricket is for India and as long as we win the ICC World Cup in every two-editions with the blessings of Sreeni Mama, I don’t have any complaints. It'll be cool if he can become the FIFA President :-).

Unforgettable Pularikum Moment- Lionel Messi’ missed free kick at 120+1 ET in the Final against Germany.

FYI- In 2017 FIFA U-17 Men’s World Cup is going to happen in India (Chennai is not listed). As a host India qualifies by default. Good luck.