The player taking the corner looks familiar. Never mind the face; the swing of the right foot is a dead giveaway. It’s the kind of fluid and kinetic motion that, seen even once, is not easily forgotten. The swing of the foot is low and slow, stopping in mid-air for a fraction of second, as it wraps itself over the ball. The movement is so smooth it seems effortless, yet the power behind it is unmistakable. The ball soars, drops and curves, precisely into the head of Fernando Morientes. But the striker’s header balloons over the crossbar. Morientes flashes an apology; Figo grudgingly accepts.
The moment could have been composed in Nou Camp or Santiago Bernabéu, sometime at the stroke of the century, but here it was at the DY Patil Stadium, in the blistering Mumbai heat and humidity, in 2025. They swayed and swung as they celebrated a night etched in the past, watched countless times on the television. The footballers, agile and athletic in their peak years, their tissues and muscles ravaged by age and injuries, were slack and sluggish. But there was no lament, pity or tedium.
Ultimately, exhibition games occur without context. It’s unrehearsed, light-hearted theatre, when the players strive to reenact their roles they once performed, but without the lure of the points, trophies, titles or awards, or the fire and heat of a rivalry. But they make no pretences or false promises. The audience too are aware of the reality before hitting the stands, that they are not watching an original El Clasico, but a counterfeit version of it.
But it does not matter whether Luis Figo is 52 or Xavi is 45. In the mind of a fan, they are forever 25. The idol never ages. The fan doesn’t spot the distending contours of their torso, or the curving arch of their shoulders, but the way they always were. All they see is Xavi as the unmatchable pass-master and Figo the ridiculous stylist. A week ago, Chennai marvelled in Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, and Lucio, when they duelled against Indians Eleven, helmed by IM Vijayan.
With the idol, a part of the watcher too remains ageless, stuck in everlasting youth. Watching Ronaldinho would have transported them back to their childhood, teenage or early youth. It would have stirred memories. It’s how sports tragics mark and measure their lives, how they once remembered anniversaries and birthdays. Oh that day Ronaldinho scored that stunner against England; or the night Lionel Messi’s wonder goal sealed the El Clasico. Or the evening Sachin Tendulkar whipped up the hundred in sand-storming Sharjah. Watching a legend of the past is, in a sense, reliving your own past.
Football legend Luis Figo, playing for Real Madrid Legends, glides past a FC Barcelona Legends player at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)
The soul of the exhibition games industry—masquerading as legends matches, testimonial matches or charity games and preseason tours—is evoking nostalgia. It is perhaps the most defining reason people watch sport. To relive the past through the present. When Tendulkar recreated the strokes that made a nation stop to fall in love with cricket in the International Masters League last month, he made the nation relive the whole Tendulkar experience. His touch unstained by age, he unboxed the full range—the straight drive, upper cut, on-the-toes back-foot punch, the flicks and paddles. The crowd thronged the stadium and streaming platforms experienced a windfall of viewers.
A flurry of leagues has sprouted to keep the post-retired lives of cricketers busy. England hosted the World Championship of Legends; the US held US Masters T20; the Legends League Cricket tournament regaled Srinagar last October.
Not only cricketers and footballers, a swathe of retired athletes appear in exhibitions games world over, making the league of legends a highly-watched television/streaming product. Last year, Roger Federer waltzed into the centre court in Shanghai for a doubles match. He displayed little rust as he paired up with singer Eason Chan and thrashed China’s highest ranked tennis player Zhang Zhizhen and table tennis world champion Fan Zhendong. His farewell game, too, was something of an exhibition game, when he tangoed with his friend and adversary Rafael Nadal against Jack Sock and Frances Tiafoe at the 2022 Laver Cup in London. Plans are afoot to organise an annual exhibition game between the two tennis greats. Usain Bolt appears in a raft of events, from track and field exhibition spirits, to playing cricket and juggling football.
There is a deeper appeal—the sportsmen are not from a distant past, but of recent vintage and thus both exotic, lovable and relatable. An earthy charm throbs, in contrast to the elusive and distant fields they roved in their peak professional years.
It is little coincidence that the exhibition games and legends leagues have spiralled after the pandemic. During the pandemic and locked-down months with empty fields and galleries, broadcasters unleashed the power of nostalgia on the self-isolating audience with a relentless diet of archived games. The Wimbledon week had the epochal matches played on a loop, ditto with the IPL and Euro 2020. The pandemic was a period of realisation for every business in the world, and the sports industry realised the infinite potential of retired sportsmen as crowd-pulling, TRP-shooting propositions.
A natural off-shoot has been the enhanced quality of the competitions.
These are not your standard old-timers’ fare in which ageing has-beens sadly try to relive their moments of glory for the amusement of nostalgic fans. But suffused with ample quality to still draw gasps and wow. The vision of Xavi, the finesse of Figo, even though this El Clasico might have occurred 20 years ago, it made memories for the audience. And sparked nostalgia, the essence of the exhibition-game industry.
Luis Figo, playing for Real Madrid Legends, slips past a FC Barcelona Legends player at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty) 
Football legend Luis Figo, playing for Real Madrid Legends, glides past a FC Barcelona Legends player at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)
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