foota

And what an entertaining opening match it was, with Costa Rica and Germany battling it out and Germany winning 4-2.

A couple of years ago, I toured the interiors of Jharkhand, looking at community run schools which were run by the Santhals, one of the main tribes of Chhotanagpur.

I saw a passion for football that surprised me.

This young man not only works in the family fields and goes to a community run school. His passion is football. He hasn’t access to television, but he knows the names of the football clubs: Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, Dempo.

He reminds me of when I first spotted Baichung Bhutia, a sixteen year old schoolboy from Tashi Namgyal Academy, Gangtok. This young boy was so good, that he was fielded in the Sikkim B team during the prestigious Governor’s Gold Cup. I remember sitting next to Jerri Bassey, one of Sikkim’s International footballers, and we were watching this young lad work magic with his feet. Later on, I wrote in my column in Sikkim Express that this lad would be courted by one of the major clubs and would blaze his way to fame.

True enough, he was snapped up by a top Bengal Football Club a couple of years later. The rest, as we know, is history.