HT Kick Off: Hello, emptiness
Either the allure of India men’s team has waned in Goa or the build-up was far from perfect.
“The attendance in today’s match is 2036. We thank you all for coming.” My first flippant thought after the announcement over the public address system at the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Fatorda was that the emcee had a wacky sense of humour.
Given that I was on a deadline, I couldn’t find out if thanking the sparse turnout was a dig at those who did come. But this much was clear: either Goa didn’t care about the men’s national team even when an international had come its way after eight years or the build-up was far from perfect. That it was happening in a state where football is a state sport, one which continues to produce India players and where wearing a team tee is common and gender agnostic is a matter of concern.
That closed stadium feeling.
“I am expecting the crowd to come and back us. It is our country that is playing,” India head coach Khalid Jamil had said at the pre-match media conference. After the high of the CAFA Nations Cup, this was Jamil’s first match at home. You would have thought India would feed off the energy from a venue buzzing with one. What they got was the feeling of emptiness in a stadium that can hold 19,000. Not even the news of the chief minister Pramod Sawant coming to inaugurate a stand had got the organisers scrambling to fill seats.
As I was writing this, my feed on X had a video of the UAE supporters throwing bottles as Qatar scored in Doha. I am not for once suggesting that Goa should have done the same but there’s a reason why teams refer to their supporters as the 12th player.
In the time I was in Goa for the India-Singapore 2027 Asian Cup qualifier, most people not connected to football – travelling on a three-day work trip, I did not meet many – did not know of the match on which hinged India’s faint chances of qualification. A former colleague asked why I was in her neck of the woods and on being told, replied: “Would you be back for the Al-Nassr game?”
From the taxi that drove me to my lodgings, staff at the hotel and those waiting at restaurants, it was the same thing. The buzz around FC Goa’s Asian Champions League 2 match was clear and present. Not so about the national team.
“No publicity”
“Till three days ago, I didn’t know which agency was in charge of distributing tickets,” a club official in Goa told me. “And I didn’t know where the match was being telecast. There has been absolutely no publicity.”
The India team was in Goa for three full days before the match. Media interactions could have been facilitated to create awareness but barring the official pre-match interaction none was organised.
Beyond one at the main entrance of the stadium, I saw no publicity material informing people of this group C match. At 9.30am on match day, the box office near the stadium, not far from where Churchill Brothers were training, was firmly shut.
“I have had to put out a lot of publicity material to create an interest for the Goa-Al-Nassr match,” FC Goa CEO Ravi Puskur told me. Which possibly explains why even though people are grumbling about the steep price of tickets, they are buying.
The cheapest ticket for the India-Singapore match was ₹199 and the most expensive was ₹1999. “The Ronaldo fan is different from the one who would come to support India,” said Alberto Colao, former general secretary of All India Football Federation (AIFF). “They are not comfortable buying online and could have found the price steep.”
A former general secretary of the Goa Football Association and the South Asian Football Federation, Colaco, 77, is in his fifth decade as an administrator. He is associated with different clubs in Goa including Salcete FC which, being one of founding members in 1980, he always refers to as “our club” Last week, Colaco received an award from the chief minister for his service to the sport.
Ahead of the 2017 under-17 World Cup, the former India head coach Nicolai Adams had told me how Germany ensured the 2011 Women’s World Cup was not played to empty seats. He spoke of discounted tickets, reaching out to schools and organising buses.
How much of this was done by AIFF which organised the match in Goa? In 2004, when India played Singapore, the attendance on the FIFA team sheet showed 28,000. Could have been an error but in the time before bucket seats, I remember a much bigger turnout. (Yes, even then I was doing what I do now: write on football for HT).
At the time, the state association would be given an amount by AIFF to organise a match or a tournament. The association could keep the profit if it managed to make one.
Could AIFF, with a small percentage of its ₹18 crore fund, have had a publicity drive run by the Goa Football Association (GFA)? Or got GFA to liaise with the state to ensure better turnout. Was there enough coordination between GFA and AIFF?
In the aftermath of a failed qualification campaign, Khalid Jamil isn’t the only one seeking answers. “Instead of sweeping this under the carpet, let’s learn from it,” said Colaco.
P.S: I heard a lot about Goa’s “culture” of free tickets and while it could be true, in nearly 32 years of being a sports journalist I have not been anywhere in India on work where people didn’t want complimentary tickets. I think it stems from the failure to build a culture around a team, a sport. It takes time, effort and money and is on those responsible for creating one.
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