I have been engrossed with football for a while now. From it being my favorite game in my childhood to working with India’s first ever FIFA tournament, the it’s been an exhilarating ride. I have covered Indian Football, researched about Indian football and ultimately worked with Indian football. . But let’s start with ground zero. This post is about my love for football. Everyone has a story as to how they fell in love with the game and this is my story. Football is particularly a favorite pass time in Assam, the place I come from.  I wouldn’t necessarily say that Assam is a football crazy land. But back in the days, Bordoloi Trophy was one of India’s foremost football tournament, and the residents of the state flocked in numbers to witness national and international giants locking horns with each other. The fandom for the game in Assam, might be relatively less than its neighboring North Eastern states. But there is a deep rooted connect within the Assamese...

Jamshedpur FC joins the ISL Bandwagon, football leaves a mark in Jharkhand It was a full house at the JRD Tata Sports Complex, Jamshedpur, as the home team Jamshedpur FC took on FC Goa in the second last, and the most exciting league game. But this wasn’t the only time with a packed stadium, the debut season for Jamshedpur FC has seen full house in all of the eight games that the team played in the steel capital of the country. The iconic JRD Tata Sports Complex, Jamshedpur (Photo: ISL) It was an historic day when the team played its first match in Jamshedpur, a city whose foundations were laid by a visionary, who went on to build one of the largest and the most successful conglomerates of the world. And with Jamshedpur FC, TATAs ventured into the ever-growing professional football arena. However, at no point we can call it as the first step of the TATA’s into Indian Football. The existence of the Tata Football Academy (TFA), which again is located in Jams...

I am often asked, what did I do for my masters? Media and Cultural Studies isn’t an easy answer to explain, especially within the Indian education system. Our course was an attempt to understand culture and its nuances through the means of academic works, theories, and ethnographic frameworks. Media is just another tool to do so. So, when we say culture, what does it mean? How do we define such a complicated thing like culture? In an easy way, it’s everything. From the way we live, to the way we in vibe things. From the way we comprehend notions, to the way we approach things. Everything basically forms the base of what we call ‘culture’. The stakeholders obviously are the topography, language, and upbringings. From the region I come from, football forms a very basic and subconscious part of our culture. Some might say Assam isn’t just a hotbed of football, but the North-East India is. But it’s not just about the state, it’s also a lot about the surroundings. The sc...

After a hectic two and a half months of exciting and tedious football action, the second season of the Indian Super League (ISL) finally came to an end on 20 th December. For part time football journalist like me, the end of such a short yet packed league leaves a void in my day to day functioning. With matches being played six days a week, following the league and covering it was one challenging job. You miss a match, the tables turn around. There has been a persistent complain that ISL is designed to be very hectic with back to back scheduling of matches. According to coaches it takes a huge toll on the players to perform consistently and hence makes them prone to injuries. Also as a coach, you have to rotate your players due to fatigue related reasons and thus killing the winning momentum. This complain about the duration of the league is a crucial one. On one hand football purists and coaches are asking for longer league if ISL is to create any impact on Indian footb...

A football stadium is a unique place. A large concrete structure that holds thousands of enthusiastic football fanatic individuals come together to watch 30 players play the common passion which they admire, the game. What constitutes a football stadium? We can possibly break a stadium into structural and physical components. Structural components are the infrastructural elements of the stadium, the structure, the pith, goal posts, seats, dressing rooms, washrooms, flood lights, cameras, sound systems, computers, generators and many more. Physical components include the human elements, which are classified into players, officials, fans, visitors, guests, VVIPS, media persons, stadium staff, security people and technicians amongst many others. A simple stadium which we all look up to as a recreational space is actually constituted of many elements which narrate a story of its own.  Whenever we watch a match, we just take note of the 22 players playing the ground, s...

I remember my school days where simple inter class Football matches seemed like World Cup finals to us, and even today every student of Shrimanta Shankar Academy (SSA), Dispur feels the same. The annual football championship was held somewhere near the autumn break, but the preparations for the same started almost from the first day of the session. Practice of Students at the SSA Ground. I don't actually know how this tradition stared in the school, but every student is serious about this football tournament. I remember, the very first time we had a championship was way back in 2004, when we were in class IV and we played against two other sections of the same batch. And you know what, we were the champions.  Then towards the later part, from class VI onwards, matches were played against all the sections of Class VI to IX. And now there are various divisions, VI-VII, Group A which comprised of five sections of both the classes competing for the title. While VII-X ...