Ignorant Football Fans in India Need to Rise

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I still remember the morning of 28th April 2011 when all my friends who were Real Madrid and Barcelona fans were in a tussle on Twitter, Facebook and all social platforms available, all this cause of the sending off of the Madrid central defender Pepe when he had actually not touched Dani Alves. And the social football fight was also there on 7th May 2009 when Barcelona knocked out Chelsea with Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo disallowing many of the penalty chances that Chelsea should have actually got with Ballack and Drogba leading the race to shout at the ref. But on 24th of July 2011 everything was all cool why should there be any issue, no EPL no La Liga no SerieA so just for my so called football loving friends to know on 23rd July 2011 UAE defeated India 3-0 in the first leg of the World Cup qualifiers.

Oh please don’t stress your head thinking why is this Jughead making such a hue and cry about a loss as it keeps happening in sports. I am making this hue and cry because India ended the match with only 9 men in blues on the field, with Red card being awarded to Debabrata Roy and Subrata Pal when there wasn’t much of a physical contact in any of the two situations which led to the penalties and also the red cards. Now where are the Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea fans gone come on how can you be a club faithful if you are not even close to being a country faithful?  Every player in the world says and feels there is no better feeling than playing for your national team. Please a humble request don’t start with the age old topic that Indian football is not that great come on how can it be great when their own countries football supporters have no idea about what they are going through.

The referee in that match was Banjar Al Dosari who is from Qatar, just asking the FIFA committee what were they actually thinking when they knew India were suppose to play Qatar before the qualifiers why designate Dosari to take control of the match. Me being very neutral follower of football won’t comment anything more on this but would surely want to bring your attention on to the two Red card situations.

 

Debabrata Roy Red Card

One of the UAE midfielder sent in a cross which was met by a deflection and was falling in the path of the UAE striker with Roy only chasing him and Subrata Pal in total control to snatch the ball from the air but then the Striker came tumbling down holding his ankle with there being no physical contact from Roy only a defensive pressure. What next? Debabrata was given his marching orders.

Subrata Pal Red Card

Considered to be one the highly experienced and talented shot stoppers in Asian sub continent especially due to his Spiderman style reflexive saves. Almost same situation as the first one the ball crossed in the box and the ball being in the reach of the Indian keeper he jumped caught the ball took a step and raised his knees to his abdomen as all keeper do which is very normal. And with the striker charging towards him Subrata just brushed the UAE striker on the side ribs and the striker who had a good course in play acting and loved the lush green turf started to roll on the lush green turf which I would say surely deserved a yellow card. But Subrata’s past reputation (Junior Incident) came to haunt him and was shown the red card.

Has anyone got any reason that would speak in favor of the mockery made by the referee of the beautiful game? But surely everyone would want to congratulate our coach Armando Colaco who has done a great job with his side, even after being nine men down for most of the match we played much much better than 11 men under Houghton. We were passing well, we were trying to attack and we played as a unit, what more can you expect 9 men to do against 12 men (ref included). We displayed courage, talent and passion to win.

Now my question comes back to all the readers where were all the football followers in India when this was happening why were there no fights on the social network forums? Where had your football following spirit disappeared? If this sought of situation would have happened in cricket I’ll tell you what all would have happened:

  • A group would have been made on Facebook say “BAN DOSARI” with 1 million followers
  • May be a Candle march may be at India gate
  • Or if it was a very critical situation say with respect to a match with Pakistan there would have been a massive discussion in parliament with bats and wickets been thrown around.

But in this case what happened NOTHING. For everyone who says India is not a footballing nation but a cricketing nation wouldn’t it be better if we would be known as Sports Nation of the world. If I take the first red card scenario and compare it with Puyol doing the same my Catalan supporter friends would have had the FB status “Puyol was at his amazing best but the ref was biased” and as for Pal’s situation if Casillas would have got red carded my Castilian supporter friends would have had the status “Dosari has no idea what goalkeeping is all about”. Come on guys I know Indian football still needs to develop a lot but come on show some respect, trust and support in your national team Climax holds same importance to Indian football as Dhoni does to Indian cricket.

“THESE ARE MY VIEWS ALONE”

Check the Red card incident and fan’s opinions on that : Click here

Also check out the following fan discussions:

Rematch India vs UAE 1st Leg

FIFA World Cup 2014 Qualifiers

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12 COMMENTS

  1. @Arun agree to u totally…. hoping for a bright future for Indian football and more words from my heart and soul…. cheers

  2. @srijan_p2P

    Yes I agree with what you have written.These days one can see so many EPL ,SPL and other European club “fans” who passionately follow their clubs. But what is appalling is their apathy towards Indian football.

    One of the reason being that the so called club “fans”…are not capable of gauging the quality of players in the I-league. I have seen so many players who can according to me play easily in top European leagues.The “fans” think that football can only be played by some elite Europeans or in other words think that Indian are “not good enough”.

    @hari You are right too.It would be wrong to say that all football followers dont care for the Indian team.There are some like u and me who do care. Coming back to the match, the refereeing decisions on that day were shocking.Sadly we saw no response from the Indian media. Armando has assembled a set of good players and he plays them in the right positions.I am confident we can a get a positive result on 28th. I am not expecting India to qualify for WC. First we need to be become asian giants. I think we have turned a corner.

  3. Thank you Hari for puting ur point forward… and its nice tht ur in the list of non ignorant indian fans…. FYI all international club fans are not necessarily taken for granted that they not Indian football fan… I am a Real Madrid fan and i can assure you big time… but tht doesnt mean i wud ignore Indian football… the only difference between ur words and mine was I generalised the situation u stereotyped it… my article my views were directed towards indian football fans be it those who follow indian football or not. Those who do not they shud realise the fact that its always Country above club and those who do follow Indian football they read it and find football fans who dont follow indian football and make them realise the fact country above club…. and i do realise football fans in india is increasing rapidly i can assure you the growth rate of football fans is more than cricket in india cause Indian football is in dev stage and Cricket has almost reached its peak until we start playin 10-10 matches… my intention were clear sorry if i hurt urs…

  4. N m waiting 4 d 2nd leg….n i think d stadium wud b full unlike d 1st leg in UAE in wich only few ppl turned up n d 35% of d crowd were indians 😀

  5. Dude ur “real madrid” n “barca” fan friends r ignorant nt d rest of us(Indian footy fans)….only bcoz ur frnds didn post anything on their social networking sites how can u blame rest of us?Actually ur ignorant abt indian fans….there r millions of us supporting india…..I know there r nt much supporters 4 india than manutd barca n alll…but indian fans r growin in numbers….i assure u tht….

  6. Thanks ashwin and Himanshu…..
    I hope the whole football community of our country is together on 28th July for the return leg in Delhi…. and i hope we see a trunaround we deserve it….

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