Jharkhand - 2 Different Shades of Football

The Indian state of Jharkhand has always been a mystery to me. All I know about it is what my driver, Samir, says about his days growing up in his Jharkhand village and the stories I read about Naxalites in Jharkhand hijacking trains, buses and government convoys. That being said, I was both excited and a bit nervous to find out that a few of my colleagues and I were scheduled to fly down to Jharkhand to meet Tata Football Academy (TFA), India’s most successful youth football academy, and then visit the village where my friend Franz Gastler runs his YUWA India NGO http://yuwa-india.org/

We flew into Jharkhand’s capitol, Ranchi, and my excitement began to overpower my nervousness. I love travelling domestically in India and love travelling to new places even more. However, y excitement quickly turned into fear as we hopped into a car on life support and then traversed the most dangerous 2 lane highway that I have ever been on. Just thinking about how many “near death” encounters we had on the road makes me shiver.

After about 3 hours on the road, we finally landed in a city that Tata built called Jamshedpur. It is a quaint township that is home to Tata’s massive steel plant and TFA; the place that has produced 121 Indian national team players over the past 23 years.

The Academy is quality for Indian football standards which means it has a decently maintained pitch and accommodation facilities. What I actually enjoyed most about TFA were the people. Starting from the head administrator, Mr. Bhalla, to the coaches and the cadets, those who are involved with TFA were passionate, committed and hardworking; all qualities you could probably say for most employees of any Tata company.
In addition to the people, I also loved the fact that our Managing Director, Sukhvinder Singh, got to live out his childhood dream of spending the night in TFA; even though this was for a site visit instead of actually being a cadet. He didn’t seem to mind either way…

Our group left TFA early and endured another 3.5 hours on the crazy highway connecting Jamshedpur and Ranchi. We got to Ranchi with just enough time to see our friend Franz Gastler in his village and meet one of his rising female football stars. I’ve met Franz multiple times now but never in the village where he has committed his time, energy and resources to training a group of boys and girls on how to properly play football. It was a wonderful experience and definitely humbled our group as we watched Franz serve as caretaker, coach and PR rep for one of the girls in his program who was home from school that day because her parent’s couldn’t afford to pay her school fees.

We were there just long enough for this girl to beat me in a juggling contest and then took off to catch our flight back to Delhi. All in all it was a great short trip that opened my eyes to the fact that Jharkhand is quickly becoming a hotbed for quality Indian football players and administrators. I’m sure it is not my last trip to this interesting state.



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