Kapadia's biography of Indian football reflects a deep affinity of the game

Kapadia's kind of affection for football is rare to find in India and his biography, 'Barefoot to Boots' is a startling testament to that

The past few months have seen two wonderfully absorbing books on football, Michael Cox’s The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines and Duncan Alexander’s Outside the Box: A Statistical Journey Through the History of Football, hit the shelves. When it comes to deconstructing tactics in the modern game, there are very few who can match the percipience of Cox. Alexander — hugely revered as OptaJoe on Twitter — is a number-adoring brainiac whose statistical exactness is almost essential to any most match report. As writers and analysts, both Cox and Alexander are enormously important critics.
 
To the international audience, Novy Kapadia may not be in that exalted class just yet, but at home, it would be an injustice to dismiss him as anything less. Kapadia is, after all, a ubiquitous figure in Indian football, having been writing and talking about the game for over 30 years. Any football match in India seems incomplete without his shrill, unfailingly passionate voice in the commentary box. He can sometimes be guilty of flagrant oversimplification, but that isn’t to question his sharpness at dissecting the game; Kapadia knows his football. Perhaps that’s why the surprise here isn’t so much that he decided to write a book on Indian football, it’s what took him so long.
 

Bengaluru FC captain Sunil Chhetri (in white) during the 2017 AFC Cup final. Photo: Reuters

Kapadia’s obsession with football began early. In Barefoot to Boots: The Many Lives of Indian football, he recounts how in December 1965 he gave his grandmother’s funeral a miss to watch a Mohan Bagan game in the Durand Cup. Amusingly, when he returned home, he wasn’t greeted with the demeaning dressing down he was secretly expecting. Instead, all the men — including the family priest — pulled aside the young Novy desperate know to if Bagan had made it to the next round.
 
Remembering this embryonic fondness for the game, Kapadia writes: “… I had probably taken my first steps in the journey towards becoming a football writer… I used to watch all the matches with great concentration, so the great moves and dribbling skills remained embedded in my mind.”
 
Clearly, Kapadia found his calling fairly early. For most of us that young — Kapadia was 13 in 1965 — and deeply in love with football, initial instincts impel us into fostering ambitions of playing the game at the highest level, not necessarily writing about it (yes, I’m a failed footballer, too). But Kapadia’s decision to study the game was, in fact, a prudent one, for Barefoot to Boots is a terrific example of quality football research carried out over a number of years. And to his credit, Kapadia was a serious club-level player as well.
 
The book  is a miniature version of India’s football history, with Kapadia romantically retelling antiquated tales, the best of which include the legendary coach Syed Abdul Rahim and his Charminar cigarettes, and 10-year-old Nagendra Prasad Sarbadhikari’s purchasing of a football in 1877 that would ignite a sweeping spark for the sport among youngsters in Calcutta. There is also space reserved to mark the halcyon days of the Indian national side, which won gold at the 1951 and 1962 Asian Games.
 

Barefoot to Boots The Many Lives of Indian Football, Author: Novy Kapadia, Publisher: Penguin, Pages: 345, Price: Rs 399 

Those times are obviously long gone — India currently finds itself ranked 13th in the continent, behind war-ravaged Syria that is, quite bewilderingly, on the cusp of qualifying for next year’s World Cup in Russia.
 
More than anything else, Barefoot to Boots — the first part of the title a tedious allusion to the Indian team playing with nothing but white tape on its feet at the 1948 London Olympics — is remarkable for the ground it manages to cover. Kapadia succeeds in blending the bygone with the contemporary effectively; this is a precious work that gladly embraces both Chuni Goswami and Jeje Lalpekhlua. Kapadia’s propensity for detail is perhaps aptly reflected in his opting for dedicating chapters to all major Indian football nurseries, including Bengal, Goa, Kerala, Punjab and Hyderabad.
 
The specifics, however, lead to the book’s undoing in some parts. A linear narrative sees Kapadia hasten from one event to another, often failing to elaborate on some of the intriguing anecdotes, the most fascinating of which involves former Mohun Bagan midfielder Sudip Chatterjee.
 
Sometime in the mid-1980s, Chatterjee expressed a desire to marry a girl whose family were devout East Bengal supporters. The feverish rivalry — which often snowballed into violence — meant that such a union was going to be tricky. Only a transfer — hazardous again, since moving from Bagan to East Bengal is like swapping Spurs for Arsenal — could make it possible. “Once Sudip joined East Bengal, the girl’s father gave his assent… it all ended happily for them,” writes Kapadia.
 
In some ways, beneath the sentimental exterior, Barefoot to Boots tries to make a valid, larger point: that Indian football had it good once upon a time. Kapadia bemoans the lack of professionalism that hampered genuine talents from flourishing, but refrains from venturing too much into the neglect that has the left sport in India in ruins.
 
Instead, he honours the mystical legacies of Jarnail Singh, a fearless defender who was central to India’s triumph in Jakarta at the 1962 Asiad, Tulsidas Balaraman, a forward who would’ve been as celebrated as Hidetoshi Nakata and Park Ji-sung had it not been for a short career, Sheoo Mewalal, a colossal goalscorer who died in appalling obscurity, and Goswami, who Kapadia describes as a player who could dribble as well as Ronaldinho and some of the other dazzling Brazilian wide men.
 
Football administrators over the years are, however, held culpable in some cases, particularly when it comes to the onus of expanding the sport in India.
 
Kapadia’s kind of affection for football is rare to find in India and Barefoot to Boots is a startling testament to that. He concludes, somewhat prophetically, with, “Overall, a bright future beckons Indian football, but patience and time are needed for success.” Kapadia himself has been waiting for a good three decades; his next book will hopefully talk about some of India’s more recent triumphs.