Sucker. Soccer.

I’m an Indian. I love sports.

Quite obviously, people would assume – This guy must be a cricket fanatic. His favourite player – Sachin Tendulkar. Nothing against “the man”. He’s excellent. Nothing against the sport too, in fact. I just hate that it’s ‘a default’ in this country.

One trillion, our population. Or more.

And, we can’t churn out 11 good players for a football team.

Yes, I am biased.

I love football.

More than anything.

More than anything else.

We have umpteen number of players. All kit-up, making a beeline, waiting for a chance to play for the Indian team. Good players too, I’m sure. It’s just that, the importance of soccer gets overshadowed by that of cricket. For some reason, it is considered the most important sport ever in India. More important than any other sport, for that matter.

Nevertheless, I’m a socceroo. And I’ll talk about it.

Now. With the kind of money that flows in the country, we can create a new river and name it something. Paiseshwari, perhaps. It’ll turn out to be a fantastic tourist spot. So many of them would be attracted to it. You have no clue!

For all we know, we have so much money that we can easily afford to buy a couple of countries. Having said that, one should look at the non-funded soccer pitches here. I remember my playing days. More than the game, the ground created a storm. A storm of mud, that is. Forget the fact that 23 people are running on the ground. Even if a dog ran, it created a mud cloud.

Also, I’ve seen videos where strikers have missed out on scoring opportunities because of our awful pitches. Like, their legs get stuck in the ground below. The videos might easily qualify for a funny video on YouTube. But, it is actually tragic funny.

And that’s what pisses me off. Not just the ground conditions. Everything related to the non-financed sport. All I wish for is, invest at least a quarter of it in soccer. Don’t know how well we’d fare. But, it’d be great to start off something new. After all, it’s the sport for the new generation.

A decade later, when someone writes down something on their blog starting off with – I’m an Indian and I love sports – we can keep people guessing till the next line. I’m sure of that.

So, everything about soccer in this country screams immaturity. Everything. The people who manage it, for one. As far as soccer goes, we are the thirsty crow trying to drink water from the jug. Unfortunately, there are no pebbles around.