Why football fans in Goa are becoming an animated, even belligerent lot

Football fans in Goa are shaking off their sussegado and becoming an animated, raucous, even belligerent lot, writes Aniruddha Sen Gupta

In his everyday avatar, that of a young entrepreneur helping his father run a wholesale cement business, Conrad Barreto is a soft-spoken, pleasant young man just under 30 years old. Like all good superheroes, he is someone who you would think leads a sedate, even humdrum, existence. But, like all good superheroes, that deceptive exterior hides the fact that, in an altered state, he is almost single-handedly transforming a signature aspect of Goan life — its football fan culture.

The story started simply enough. Barreto was a dedicated Liverpool fan who first started using social media to bring together other Indian