There were two kinds of people in Kolkata on Friday evening — those who got tickets to see the Argentina-Venezuela friendly football game live and those who had to be content watching it on television. The 75,000 in the stadium will long have stories to tell their future generations, stories about how they saw the incomparable Lionel Messi in the flesh, kicking, dribbling and almost scoring.
Though cricket is the de facto religion in India, Kolkatans, true to their wont, are fanatical about football. And Messi is nothing short of divinity for fans. Other international players have come to Kolkata — Pele and Maradona among them — but they had retired; here was an active footballer showing his stuff. And what stuff it was — the one time child prodigy certainly lived up to the hype even if he did not actually score a goal. As an exercise in popularising the sport, this was an excellent idea. Though there is no immediate danger to cricket yet, the popularity of football is growing throughout India. With our boys in blue at their nadir in more ways than one, this may be a good time to push for other sports, soccer definitely being one of them. We are not going to make it to the World Cup anytime soon, but the process has to start somewhere and initiatives like this one can certainly go a long way.