The reality is that the 1956 Olympics had just 11 participating nations, due to cancellations. It was an undistinguished tournament that featured mis-matches and walkovers. Following five withdrawals, the tournament featured three Eastern Bloc teams and four from Asia in a tournament that matched professionals against the amateurs required in Olympics.
India came into the tournament after competing in the two previous Olympics at London where France vanquished India 2-1 in the first round and then again in Helsinki where they suffered a similar ignominy, losing 10-1 to Yugoslavia in the preliminary round. Due to a much tighter field in Melbourne, India actually benefited getting a bye in the first round and then defeating Australia 4-2 thanks to a Neville D'Souza hat trick, making the semi final where nemesis Yugoslavia beat us 4-1 and then finally Bulgaria beat us 3-0 in the third place play off. And that was the end of that.
By a quirk of fate, India qualified by default for the 1950 World Cup finals as a result of the withdrawal of all their scheduled opponents. But the governing body All India Football Federation decided against going to the World Cup, being unable to understand the importance of the event at that time. This year we attempted like Sisyphus to roll the boulder up the mountain yet again and lost to Guam (yes, you would ask - where is that?) 1-2 in the June World Cup qualifiers.
For some strange reason, football is synonymous with Bengal, although Goa and Kerala will claim equal suzerainty over it. Punjab in the past produced high calibre players; one remembers Inder Singh of Leaders Club Jalandhar and JCT Mills, Phagwara fondly.
In the early 1980s, I landed in Kolkata having grown up in Delhi. Imagine my horror, when I, a cricket junkie, found Kolkata was completely football crazy. The towering statue of Goshto Pal on the maidan, at the very intersection on Red Road where the holy trinity of the megalopolis football craze converged – Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting – was nothing short of a pilgrimage for a neophyte like me.
Having played football in school and a more bruising form later in the tea plantations, I too trooped to the makeshift stadia to make my tryst with the Kolkatan version of the beautiful game. And the passion on display was unbelievable – Shyam Thapa with his bicycle kick, the speedy Subhash Bhowmick, Subrata Bhattacharya tall and stately in defence, Gautam Sarkar, Mohd Habib, Mohd Nayeem and many more were part of a fabled pantheon worshipped by all of us. Calcutta had witnessed Pele in an exhibition game in September, 1977 and the afterglow of his presence still remained in the city's maidans.
But this flirtation with football was to receive a rude jolt. Two Iranians landed in the city – Majid Bakshar and Jamshed Nassiri – and they opened up a whole new playing style. Nassiri was the poacher in the strike zone, while Majid was the playmaker and ball passer. They made a fantastic combination; Majid with the flair, daredevilry and derring-do in the mid field, making the play for his compatriot Nassiri who struck home with dexterity and timing with both head and foot. The duo came from the province of Khuzestan, and Majid even represented Iran in the 1978 World Cup played in Argentina. Both came to Aligarh Muslim University to pursue higher studies, but were spotted by talent scouts and recruited by East Bengal. Subsequently, they joined Mohammedan Sporting Football Club and Kolkatans flocked to the maidans. The duo's entry into the football cauldrons of Kolkata was a defining moment in Indian football. Football supporters were astonished at the artistry with which the two Iranians played the game, in stark contrast to the the rest of the league.
This first glimpse of real football was 'revolutionary', a term that may be politically incorrect given that Kolkata was then in the throes of Leftist rule. The end came swiftly as the more talented of the two – Majid – was debilitated by substance abuse. He returned to Iran, while Jamshed stayed on in his adopted city Kolkata.
Jolt number two came with the advent of the Nehru Cup in Kolkata in 1982. My memory of that tourney was of the Uruguayan player who could throw the ball into the D, such was the power of his arm. The robust playing style, the smart set pieces and the sheer agility of the Uruguayan players was a delight to watch as they vanquished China 2-0 to win the inaugural tournament. The Uruguayans had shown all too well why the South American style was a killer app in world football. Two years later in 1984, Poland showed their hard tackling man-to-man marking style and defeated China. Kolkatans awoke with a start to the pace and speed on display in the Nehru Cup final.
The final decapitating blow to the 'art form' practiced on Kolkata's maidans came with the introduction of live television, which beamed pictures of the 1986 football World Cup for the very first time.
India's love affair with the World Cup football tournament started in 1982, when for the first time the semi finals and final had been telecast live on Doordarshan. There was also deferred telecast of some of the earlier round matches. Brazil's brilliance in that tournament, showcased by the attacking flair of Zico, Socrates, Falcao and Toninho Cerezo, won them many supporters.
In the eighties, the majority of India supported Brazil. Over the years that changed. In 1986, for the very first time the entire World Cup was telecast live in India. With Mexico being the hosts, the tournament gained notoriety.
Almost overnight, pocket dynamo Diego Maradona became a star with fans all across the globe, and Kolkata being no exception. Exposed to 'real' football, Calcutta switched off from its own homegrown stars gradually. The yawning gap in skills and talent having been thrown into stark relief.
The 1983 cricket World Cup win ignited a renewed passion for the game and even Calcutta was consumed by it. Strangely it was a Marwari businessman from Calcutta who then realised that it was time for the true commercial exploitation of cricket using the axis of commerce to take the game to the next level in terms of a wider and deeper dispersal. Jagmohan Dalmiya became the instrumentality as he marketed the one-day game across India. In the process he may have extinguished whatever passion there was for football in the aforementioned pockets.
In a cricket obsessed nation, football thrived only in a few pockets and qualitatively was caught out in the 1980s. Now it is nice to see the Indian Soccer league trying to revive interest in the most loved sport around the world, but it will take a lot more than a league to pump prime it.
If football is so popular in the country as the crowds for ISL seem to be suggesting, then what prevents us from playing it well. We don't have the skill sets or the stamina to play top quality soccer. The all-pervasive presence of cricket has subsumed most other sport. India, however, has managed to do well in individual sporting disciplines like badminton, tennis, shooting, wrestling, boxing, where we are slowly building competencies.
The ISL is merely a beginning. Football in India requires an underlying credo for the sport to gain traction. It needs the presence of role models and icons who can inspire individuals, also needs a push to build nurseries and so much more. From South America to Asia, from the USA to tiny Guam, from Europe to the kingdoms in the middle east, football is the greatest game, followed with unbelievable passion. India is the exception; we need to step up and reset.
(Sandeep Bamzai is a sports junkie, editor & author. Currently a Visiting Fellow at ORF. Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of The Fan Garage)