Football fever

Richard Fernandes works on an early morning shift in the HR department of JP Morgan. He turns in early at night so that he can leave home at 4am.

From June 11, Fernandes will have to reset his body clock. He plans to now catch up on sleep after his shift ends at 2pm because he will stay up through the evening and night watching the Fifa World Cup, football’s premier event.

“It’s the one thing all football fans wait for — the World Cup. It doesn’t get any bigger than this. Losing sleep over it is hardly an issue,” says Richard who has rarely missed any match of any of the World Cup editions since 1990. “I was only 10 then and remember getting hooked on to the game in no time. With every passing year, my affinity for the sport only grew.”

Richard belongs to a strong niche group of football followers in the country — one which has been growing lately — who would rather watch Frank Lampard dribble than analyse Sachin Tendulkar’s cover drive.

In a country obsessed with cricket, football is gaining a lot of popularity among young sports lovers whose exposure to the sport is driven largely by satellite television and the internet.

Twenty-year-old Vignesh Iyer, a budding musician, watches cricket but would choose football over everything else any given day. “Football has everything going for it. The pace is quick, there’s tactical game-play involved and you find so many more people you can connect with over the sport,” he says.

For youngsters like Vignesh who spend a lot of time on the internet, it’s pretty apparent that football is the game that people globally root for.

“At any given point of time, there are a million discussions happening on football. Besides, the passion for it runs so high that everyone feels a need to discuss their obsession,” says Vignesh, a hardcore fan of Chelsea, the popular English Premier League (EPL) club.

Interestingly, the fan-following of these clubs — and their individual players — is much higher than the interest in any single country participating in the World Cup. Vignesh for instance will be rooting for England because players from his favourite club will be playing for it. He is also tracking the Ivory Coast team for striker Didier Drogba.

Arsenal supporter Neil D’souza believes that the ESPN-Star telecast of EPL matches over the last few years has been hugely responsible for the rise of the ‘club culture’ among Indian football fans.

Some of this club culture is seeping into cricket via IPL. But footballers sneer at any comparison. “In T20, the first six overs have the Powerplay; this is followed by a dull phase and then the onslaught in the slog overs. But every minute of a football match is crucial and keeps you glued to your seat,” says the 24-year-old D’souza whose love affair with the sport begun in 1998 when he was exposed to the brilliance of Ronaldo and the rest of the Brazilian team.

“I can never forget Ronaldo’s mysterious illness just before the finals; it cost his team the Cup. But I followed the team and finally four years later, Ronaldo showed his true worth,” he recalls.
All footlall lovers have their favourite recall moments. Richard for instance talks of Michael Ballack’s “sacrifice” for Germany. It was the 2002 World Cup and Germany was playing host South Korea in the semis. Leading by one goal, all Germany had to do was keep South Korea from scoring.

At one point when South Korea counter-attacked, star striker Ballack tackled a player though the German had already been handed a yellow card. “He knew that the tackle could keep him out of the finals but he went ahead only so his team could win. That kind of sacrifice is rare,” says Richard. This year he will be rooting for Argentina, especially its striker Lionel Messi.

Given the rising football fever, you can expect to see many more youngsters enrolling in football coaching classes this summer. That the young, urban crowd prefers football reflects in the fact that Manchester United Cafe Bar, a popular franchise especially those that support Manchester United Football Club, opened in Palladium, High Street Phoenix, recently.

“It’s apparent there’s a buzz around the sport. The bar has seen more people coming in than we had expected. And the number is bound to go up during the World Cup,” says Sucheta Goenka, director of Mirah Group that brought the bar to India.

For a football fan, few things are more exciting than watching the sport in a place that has been fashioned around the sport — there’s an entire seating area shaped like a dugout inside the bar.

A staff member at the bar recounts an interesting anecdote. Recently, a small boy wasn’t allowed entry into the bar because he was not accompanied by a guardian. He stood out and watched the game on the big screen parked outside the bar till his father arrived and the twosome was let in.