Opinion Football can turn around fortunes

Cite Universitie in Paris 14 district where Greek House Director Yourgoulis gave me hostel accommodation is where I sat mesmerised before that b&w TV set. I’d grab a chair in the small table tennis lounge-cum-TV room an hour before the match. I could not speak French then so had to guess at everything,including the incredible moves of Beckenbaur and Muller. I peppered my fervour with Greek swearwords like malacca and putanis. The word ralenti often cropped up so I asked the only other Indian student—who had given me to understand that he spoke very good French—what it meant. He said ralenti is like penalty. I believed him but discovered by the 1978 World Cup that ralenti means slow motion in French.

In 1994,I visited Argentina to implement a global project. Much to the chagrin of my client,Elizabeth,I’d wander into the ‘dangerous’ Buenos Aires slums to observe social trends. I found that companies like Pepsi and Coca Cola had sponsored good football grounds to encourage slum children play. In fact,Manchester City striker Carlos Tevez,who is now part of the Argentina team,played street football in these ‘no go’ areas as a child.

At that time,as I watched young boys practice football,others quarreling—one even had a gun—and I remember thinking how terrific these sophisticated sports arrangements were. This crumbling slum had murky streets where even emergency services often refused to enter. In our poor village in Bengal,we could never think of such sports facilities or of anybody from our village becoming a world famous football player. Yet,even football champion Maradona,currently Argentina’s coach,was raised in a poor family in a Buenos Aires shanty town. He was ten when he was spotted by a talent scout.

Elizabeth and I once went to a coffee shop at a national football ground. A boisterous group were gesticulating wildly about an imminent major local football match in the city starring Boca Juniors versus River Plate. I wanted to join their table-talk. Elizabeth did not approve of it but I explained to her that the food company they had acquired had its roots here and its transformation work required us to gather cultural aspects of Argentina and football was an intrinsic part of it. This kind of social phenomenon would bring us the right insight for this acquired company’s future plans.

I walked across to those guys and introduced myself as a Bengali Indian living in Paris. The moment they heard Kolkata,they hugged me. It seems a few in this group of football journalists had gone to ‘Mother Teresa’s city’ with the Argentina team in 1984 for the Nehru Cup. They marvelled at the Kolkatans’ passion for football. Happy to meet a fellow football lover from across the globe,they offered me a ticket to the match that day. I’ll never forget that immediate connect that football

created.

I’ve been to two World Cups now—in France and in Spain—and seen other European football matches and found the excitement that emanates there to be incomparable to any other bonding experience.

Fortunately,there’s something beyond elite intellectual global recognitions like the Nobel Prize. Excellence in sports can also create international heroes. The youngest Nobel Laureate,Lawrence Bragg,was 25 when received the prize along with his father. And in sports,Pele and Maradona were teenagers when they acquired world fame with their genius. Pele,who grew up in São Paulo,could not even afford a ball and played with a grapefruit or a sock stuffed with a newspaper. He earned working in tea shops until he was discovered by a coach. When he scored his 1,000th goal,he dedicated it to the poor children of Brazil. These famous players are a great inspiration and powerful motivators for underprivileged

children.

In India,sports is always short changed,the focus being on education. But everybody in society cannot be,or does not need to be,a graduate. Basic school education is enough to become a globally renowned sportsman. In India,sports can be a great medium to encourage disadvantaged people to acquire prowess instead of abandoning them into ghettoes where crime generally grows unabated.

Shombit Sengupta is a creative business consultant to top management. http://www.shiningconsulting.com