Bob Houghton is wrong. And right. India’s national coach is correct that the money spent on programmes such as the Maradona extravaganza could be better utilised developing the Beautiful Game in a country with abysmal football aesthetics and a sorrier football reputation. True. Even half that money could open doors and offer guaranteed food bowls to junior and sub-junior players. But India needs these high-profile visits to galvanise the moribund football scene in a country ranked 144th by FIFA, directly under Vanuatu. And spare a thought for Calcutta too. Maradona’s visit is the best thing that has happened to the desperate Mecca of Indian football since Pelé’s in the year the Left Front came to power. Yes, there was Oliver Kahn and there were others. But just one Pelé then, and one Maradona now.

Old clichés on the football-cricket dichotomy in India hold today for every sport that most of the rest of the world gives a damn about. Desperate footballers, ex-footballers and fans, in their inexpressible frustration, privately endorse absurdities like a 20-year moratorium on cricket to resuscitate Indian football. Cricket, with its money bags, has a couple of centuries’ lead on football and that’s that. Houghton cannot be faulted for pointing out where and how money matters. But he knows that we know that.

What Houghton and his kind do not admit the importance of in the Indian context is the value of inspiration, of the pure spectacle. The spectacle never fails football. Diego Armando Maradona kicking a football back at the crowd at Maheshtala, near Batanagar, the home of some of India’s finest footballers — Prasun Mukherjee, Sankar Banerjee, Manas Bhattacharya, Shanti Majumdar, Krishnendu Roy — will remain unreal for even those who had their share of flesh-and-blood proximity over the weekend. Given India’s football trajectory, the fear is there’ll be little left by 2050 except perhaps Goshtho Pal’s statue in the Calcutta Maidan. And it isn’t just the money: it’s the lack of attention.

... contd.