The discussion on football in India was so evasive about real issues at the Tata literature festival last Sunday in the context of the world cup football beginning this Sunday in Qatar. The whole focus was on commercialisation of the game, not democratisation, it was all about how to exploit the game for money and profits. There is a great[Read More…]
Suffocating the grassroots. Mocking the working class origins of the game. World football, and primarily European club football, has long done away with loyalties in favour of cash and contract. The professionalization of the game has seen a difficult relationship between fan, spectator and sporting management, none better exemplified than the price of tickets, the role of branding and sponsorship.[Read More…]
Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, in the US, sports creates the necessary “fantasy world” required to shield people from understanding, organizing, and attempting to “influence the real world”. Referring to sports commentary and phone-in shows, Chomsky, in an interview with AlterNet, marveled at the intellectual and analytical skills of people engaged in the sports culture. Ultimately, however,[Read More…]
Diego Armando Maradona turns 60 on October 30. “God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn’t even need to exist.” – Charles Baudelaire. It is with these words that the renowned filmmaker Emir Kusturica’s ninety-minute documentary on the one and only Maradona begins. Kusturica’s film, structured like a ‘musical’, does more than what a hundred newspaper[Read More…]
“I can’t breathe.” The end line of helpless George Floyd is burning the mighty America inside out. Mr. President is hiding in a Bunker and darkness is looming over the White House. Just like the many brutal dictators before him, the rage of the people is shattering the throne and slowly the protesters are triumphing over Trump. During this time[Read More…]
” I go about the world, hand out-stretched, and in the stadium I plead : ‘ A pretty move, for the love of God.’ And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.” – Eduardo Galeano. Watching as a neutral spectator, this is exactly what I[Read More…]
“These guys now with us in the [Iceland] national team were brought up on artificial pitches. Many would have had youth coaching in an indoor dome. They could go out if the weather was good, but they always had good facilities to train.” Heimer Hallgrímsson, joint Iceland football coach, BBC Sport, Nov 15, 2015 This has been a competition of[Read More…]
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Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
