Football is fast replacing cricket as Mumbai’s favourite sport.
At 6.30 in the morning, 35-year-old Nirvan Shah is giving a pep talk to his boys of PIFA Colaba Young Stars. The boys in an all-orange strip are all ears as they take in what their coach has to say before they start their practice session. When Nirvan Shah, with his wife Anjali, set up the Premier India Football Academy in Colaba, his aim was to create an institution where children could come and become better footballers. Shah did his BTech from London but came to Mumbai to help the youngsters who were taking up football. Little did he know that the academy would produce a group of youngsters who would form a team called PIFA Colaba Young Stars — which would break into the Elite League of Mumbai football.
It is 6.30 in the evening, dark clouds are gathering overhead, and 14-year-old Akash Mishra is all set to call it a day after a hard training session at Shivaji Park in Dadar, Mumbai. Under the watchful eyes of Kenkre Football Club director Joshua Lewis, Mishra is one of the many boys who are not deterred by the rain, and get the ball rolling for a light training session before getting ready for their practice match of the day. Similar scenes can be witnessed in several other parts of Mumbai, a city known for producing some of the finest cricketers the country has seen. But now, as football clubs and academies mushroom in all parts of the city, Mumbai is ready to embark on a footballing revolution. “Move over, the East and Goa,” seems to be the message, as Mumbai prepares to produce a new generation of footballers to take on the ultimate challenge of putting India on the football map of the world.
Let’s go clubbing
To get a perspective on how the small Mumbai clubs are taking big strides, one has to understand how the league system works. The league in Mumbai consists of the four Divisional Leagues, followed by the Senior, Super and Elite Leagues. “The whole idea is to showcase our talented youngsters, the results are immaterial to a certain extent,” says Shah, who has trained over 1,500 kids since 2003. Veteran football coach from Mumbai Adib Kenkre did the same with Kenkre FC 10 years ago. ‘Kenkre Sir’, as he is popularly known, wanted to produce not only good footballers but also good students. Kenkre FC has produced one of India’s better-known footballers, Abhishek Yadav, who has been capped 30 times for India. He was coached by Kenkre when in school and since then has played for Mahindra United and Churchill Brothers.
“Kenkre Sir’s coaching helped me a lot, as he understands what kind of mental and physical challenges a young footballer faces,” says the 30-year-old Mumbai FC striker. Lewis, a former club-level footballer himself, says that it’s been tough to break into the city leagues, but now they want to go one step further and aim for the National Football League. And they see a club like Mumbai FC, backed by the Essel Group, become an integral part of the NFL. You can’t blame them for being optimistic: Mumbai FC has now become a regular participant at the highest level of Indian football.
Each one, teach one
The trend of opening football academies in Mumbai is certainly speeding up. Take the example of the Soccer Schools of Excellence, set up by Arpreet Bajaj. Bajaj, who was a stockbroker in New York, left his job and came to Mumbai to nurture his dream and young footballers. “There’s enough talent and we want to make sure that they are given the proper training,” says Bajaj at Colaba’s R C Church ground, where he watches children aged four to 12 take part in various drills. Shah of PIFA is delighted to see academies coming up all over the city. The children are selected after organising camps for different age groups. The academies have a 1:16 coach-to-student ratio, and players are taught the technicalities of the game and also have fun playing. Thirty-six-year-old Ritu Diwan sends her son to one of the academies and says that she doesn’t mind spending money when she sees the child being taught the right way. An academy charges Rs 3,500-5,000 for an annual coaching package. But running the academy and a football club is not an easy or a cheap business. The annual expenses are close to Rs 25 lakh, which includes training and camping expenses, along with paying the coaches. PIFA has about 10 coaches on its roster, as does Kenkre FC. Kenkre FC gets support from the brand Araldite and tech company Micro Technologies.
Lewis says that they want their youngsters to play for the big clubs, but if the chances doesn’t came they shouldn’t be disappointed. Similarly, Shah says that PIFA-Colaba Youngstars FC is a community project of PIFA. It has enrolled players from the Colaba area of Mumbai to play for the team. The players are paid for every game they play. This is an opportunity for them to be seen and to be selected for the city or state or even national team. “They should use it as a platform to kickstart their career,” says Shah.
