KOCHI: Trailing traffic, sea of people draped in yellow, clarion toots of trumpets, deafening beats of drums and incessant chants of Sachin! Sachin! Chances are that you might have probably misconstrued it for being an IPL match. But the mirthful truth is that it was the blaring sound of soccer making its resounding come back in the state.
Yes, it’s finally happening! The unprecedented crowd that swarmed the stadium bore testimony to this conspicuous truth. As the ball rolled on after kick off, the stadium reverberated with rambunctious revelry. Thousands whooped and egged on the men in yellow, sighing for every missed chance, clapping thunderously for every save that David Benjamin James made.The adrenaline touched the zenith when Milagrez Gonsalves netted a goal at the 64th minute nicking in a sublime assist from Andrew Barisic. The fans broke out in boisterous gambolling ‘n’ cheering and the emphatic chants of Kerala! Kerala! drowned the intermittent silence. As the Kerala Blasters romped through the first home match, the air smacked of unbound jubilation and spectacular fireworks lit the skies leaving the soccer fans in Kerala a content lot. Adding glitz to the gala event, was a motley group of celebrities,including singer Usha Uthup, actor Rai Lakshmi, actor Taapsee Pannu, Former Indian football team skippers Bhaichung Bhutia and I M Vijayan. “It is a momentous day for football in Kerala. We have got a headstart with the ISL franchise. Now, we have to keep up the momentum and trickle down the benefits to the grassroots and launch a silent movement to rejuvenate soccer in Kerala”, a jaunty Vijayan told ‘Express’.
Third Eye
Amid the bellowing cheers, a queer thought rolled down and settled on one of the vacant seats, pondering over the question- Why the sudden publicity overdrive and why the over-zealous patronising for football in Kerala ? As inconvenient as it may sound, the unpalatable pith of truth is that beyond the hype and hoopla whipped up by the ISL franchise, there is a lot at stake for football in Kerala unequivocally hinging to the success of the league. Today, sporting spectacles have got sucked down into the confines of a parochial ‘cricketed’ gilded cage, and whether you love it or hate it, football has been one of the prime casualty. To root out this decades-old collective symptomatic malaise, a feeble, travesty of an attempt wouldn’t have sufficed. It needed an uber-potent push to rekindle the lost charm of the game that has been inherently engraved into our ethos. Indubitably, on Thursday life has come a full circle for football in Kerala.