Joga Bonito

FIFA World Cup at Russia has just got over and France has earned the crown and Croatia the heart of the World. Iceland too won the hearts of all and it was admirable to know that some in that team pursue some profession or other while not playing for their nation. In that small country the players are not idolised or deified but are simply neighbourhood friends!

In 1948 our National Team had played in the Summer Olympics of 1948 against, whom else but, France. Most of our players were without boots! And when someone asked why so, the answer our team supposed to have given merited note. It was “we play football not bootball”. So goes the story! A story of sour grapes, but a good excuse.

Well, that may have been a bit unfuturistic, for boots are a must, not only to add power to the kick, but also to protect our feet from the kick of the opponents who are adorned with boots. Opponents, did I say? Well, make it marauders. You and I have played football in our days. If you are born around the time of our independence we played a different kind of football during our youth, from what we have been witnessing in the recent world cups.

India had qualified by a quirk of fate to play in the 1950 FIFA World Cup, but our dirty politics, which was to be deeply entrenched in all walks of our lives, had already started showing its ugly head. Our Football Federation decided to withdraw for ridiculous political reasons. And we talk of encouraging sports. What a laugh!

Like I said, and like that wit of the ’48 team said, we played football, even with boots on. I mean only the feet were used to play. Not the entire body and never the hands in any case. Though football was not in the genteel league of Tennis and Cricket (the latter later went down to abysmal depths with ‘only money’ as the criterion), it was still played in a gentlemanly manner. You never deliberately kicked the opponent, you never deliberately handled the ball, and you never pushed the opponents with your hands, though a slight nudge with the shoulders was part of the game. There was a little physicality after all, no doubt. So you need to have a kind of football body apart football legs.

In countries the world over when football clubs emerged and professional players came into being, talented players earned a living out of the game. Now the talent had to transcend from the skill with the ball to avoid fierce tackling to remain injury-free. Any competition gets a menacing edge when winning is everything. More so when money is involved. That is the major difference between amateur tournaments and professional ones. Amateur ones remain on this side of friendliness but professional ones tend to cross over to the other side. When winning is everything, it becomes a case of ball jayen par admi na jayen as the Punjabis say.

Pele, who was the first recorded person perhaps, to exhibit magic at his feet, was admired by each and every one, including his opponents. But on the field, the opponents instead of matching and beating him at his skill, always got more physical, attacked him with fouls than skills, instead of taking the ball from him put all their efforts in ensuring that he didn’t get to the ball and in general almost crippled him every time. That is not the way you should respect a man with exceptional God given talent even if in your own field of activity! The ball may go past but Pele should not. I believe, Pele had vowed not to play in World Cup ever after such physical attack. But by then he was a National Treasure and could not let his country down.

It is of course the duty of the Defenders in the team to stop the advance of the opponents and disable them from scoring goals. But how? Put your best foot and skill forward, as it were! A sleight of foot, a feint, a false move to make the Forward err in his judgement of the defensive move and so on and so forth. (If I go in that vein, I might end up coaching you on defensive tactics, which is not the intention of this blog!). After all, you also have others defending the goal area and the post. But if you aim at breaking his ankle? If you pull down his shorts? If you grab him by the waist and throw him down on the ground, as if it is a wrestling match? If you aim the kick at his knee? You elbow his face while competing to head the ball? You may win the match. But you may maim him for life! And as a professional player, he has lost his livelihood. Disable the scoring of goal but don’t disable the man.

Our generation has only read about the ordeal Pele had undergone. But we have seen Maradona, the magician. When he was dribbling, it was magic, wasn’t it? From what I have read about our own Hockey legend, Dhyan Chand with his hockey stick, it appears Maradona was the same with his foot. They say the ball seemed to stick to Dhyan Chand’s stick! Maradona, we have seen cutting through the defenders like a knife through butter with the ball stuck to his nimble feet! He could turn tracks in a jiffy leaving the defenders running to nowhere and leaving the ground towards the goal post open. And what did he get? A broken ankle when he was only 20 (shame on the senior opponents). In a world cup match he was brought down by fouls almost two dozen times! In just one match! There are many, as seen in the just concluded tournament, who carry the magic moves in their feet and their tribe will only get better and better for they have to overcome enemies as in war, not just opponents as in game. Even Maradona became notorious for that “hand of God” goal! I wish he had the character to admit that it was a handball. He could have been a genuine hero and a justified God of football.

We have seen in the just concluded World Cup at Russia, where there were seismic activities on the field and in some of their respective homes, how low the tackling skills have fallen, paradoxically. I believe there is a name for such deliberate fouls. “Professional fouls”. Obviously. When the game is professional, when the players are professional, when everything surrounding the tournament is professional, why not the fouls too! And when there is something known as a professional foul, there will be a counter to it. Only they call it “diving”. Neymar, in this world Cup should get the golden boot, literally, for this special skill. He looked ridiculous rolling around for nothing. One could almost hear him squealing like a stuck pig. Actually he is such a skilled player,  it was sad to see him stoop so low. We also remember the bite by Suarez, another gifted player, which made the world delirious with laughter and the head-butt by Zidane, which upset the world. Whatever technology they bring in, VAR and the like, cannot beat a professional cheat. One will even earn a red card “professionally” as a strategy. Play football, not bootball!

The rot is not only on the field. FIFA is mired deep in corruption and God alone knows how deep and wide it is. Why? Money! Each country revels when it is awarded the chance to be a host. Why? Because it (read, the people concerned) can make money. How is the award made? By money, as everyone knows by now. It really is a jolly good rigmarole!

That brings me to Kerala, a land full of people who live in everything reflected. Nothing of their own. Not a single person there will do an honest day’s job and will not allow any honest man or institution to survive. But they will paint their homes and shops in their favourite teams’ colours. The fools! They don’t know any team other than just two. And do they play? Yes, they did some years ago, nay, some decades ago. There was a sizable number representing India, particularly in Football and Volleyball. But that was then. Then came the ubiquitous “Dubai” and the hawala money. That killed everything. To excel in sports, to represent the Nation, you got to almost punish yourself, practising, learning. Why bother when someone in the family is literally “labour”ing away in the deserts and you can show off to each other, living a life much higher than your standards are or need be, albeit foolishly, as everyone is in the same desert boat, thinking that the inflow is never ending? And to support a team apparently so passionately, do they study the teams and carry out some analyses at least, even if they don’t play? Never! That will amount to knowledge which is also taboo as it involves a bit of work and commitment. It’s all again only hearsay. Nobody studies the game. That’s why those foolhardy fellows did not know how the tapestry of the game had changed over the years and could not imagine that their heroes would bite the dust against emerging, spirited teams, who had done their home work.

Sport has much higher values than money. Money is a must, like for everything else, even for happiness. But when money becomes everything, you are killing the golden goose. Imagine a situation if, due to rampant corruption, a sport itself gets banned altogether? Sportsman spirit is not only on the field or pitch or ground. It is a facet of character. It saddens me that every sport as I knew it in my child hood is poisoned by the changing values, values where character has no place. On and off the field it is all hooliganism and street-fights, where rules have no place. In fact I believe it spreads in a top down fashion. We are not privy to see what is happening at the top levels and can only fathom things from the visuals on the field.

One person who exhibited character and sportsman spirit in FIFA 2018 is perhaps Kolinda. People like her keep my hopes alive. And teams like Iceland.

Jogo Bonito is fine. But it has to go with Joga Bonito! The Beautiful Game must be Played Beautifully!