It was past 6pm, and our young heroes were more than 30 minutes late. Inside the seminar hall, where we were to welcome them, people were growing restless. Fingers were being drummed, and conversations were wandering aimlessly.
“They have not yet set out from the stadium,” somebody told us, and there were groans of protest. The clock kept ticking, and 15 minutes later, there was a murmuring. “They’re arriving,” someone whispered. And in walked the members of the Kerala football team that brought home the Santosh Trophy after 14 years. They were here to receive gold medals from the organisation for their brilliant performance in the final against Bengal.
It was a tense match. After remaining tied at 1-1 in the regulation time, the match went into extra-time. In the 125th minute, with Kerala leading 2-1, Bengal got a free-kick at the top of the box. Tirthankar’s left-footer found its mark. Goal! Things got interesting when the game went into the penalty shoot-out. The Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata reverberated with excitement and disappointment, as Kerala scored four goals to Bengal’s two.
The players, in their bright yellow jerseys, streamed into the seminar hall like a ray of sunlight. They looked relaxed, happy… and very, very young. I was told that this is the youngest Kerala team to bring home the trophy—the average age is only 22. They had a kind of shyness to them, a refreshing air of uncertainty. They looked respectful as the editorial director of the company talked about its long association with Kerala footballers.
They laughed politely when the president of the Kerala Football Association said that he should also be given a gold medal. But their enthusiasm was reserved for head coach Satheevan Balan, as he walked up to the podium. He’s a tactical genius who took the risk of choosing relative greenhorns over established players. He talked about the distance he had to keep with the players, because he couldn't be friends with someone off the field that he might have to chastise on it. He talked about all the sacrifices that the players had made and the regimented lifestyle they had to lead.
“They didn’t even get a chance to do any shopping in Kolkata, or see the city,” he remarked.
What might have united such a ragtag bunch of youngsters into the potent force that they have become. Many of the players were students. There were 13 of them without jobs. Most of them were from remote villages in the state. Striker P.C. Anurag, 18, for example, lives in a thatched house on the side of a canal in Thrissur. His father is a coconut tree climber, and his mother is a casual labourer. There is no TV in their house and his parents watched the final from a neighbour’s home.
Afdal V.K. is from Pandikkad in Malappuram. He was one of the 12 teenagers to train at the Manchester United Soccer Schools in 2013. (He’s also known as a bit of a lady killer!) The team captain Rahul V. Raj is a 25-year-old SBI employee from Thrithallur village near Thrissur. To receive Rahul from the airport, nearly 200 people from his village, including his mother and other close relatives, arrived in two buses and a few cars.
Once upon a time, football ruled supreme in Kerala. The state was home to some of the most prestigious players in the country, like I.M. Vijayan, Jo Paul Ancheri, C.V. Pappachan, V.P. Sathyan and Victor Manjila. Since then, some might say that the glory days of football in the state were over. These boys in yellow proved that they’re not.
For then, however, they got their kicks seeing us lesser mortals pose with the Santosh Trophy, as though we had won it. In so many ways, the victory was ours as much as it was theirs.