When Hyderabad loved and lost the beautiful game

Sam steps out of his home in Vallavur Nagar in Sainikpuri bouncing a yellow football with his head. He makes it bounce five times before he loses control and then he dribbles towards the Vallavur Nagar passing larger-than-life posters of Lionel Messi, Ronaldo and a host of other international football stars. The street is festooned with flags of Brazil and Argentina as most of the residents are fans of the two countries and their star strikers. The oversized posters dwarf the motorists who stop and take a second glance. The Vallavur Nagar Football Club ground itself is half the size of a regular football field ringed by apartment complexes. “I come to play here for only one hour. My parents want me to study. I love football. I love Neymar, but my parents want me to study and I have to be back home by 7 p.m.,” says Simeon Jaden, a class VIII student of St Joseph School in Lal Bazaar.

Sitting outside his home is K. Shekhar who says he captained the Andhra Pradesh football team in the 1985 National Games where the team lost to eventual winner Delhi. “This area including Bollarum, Jai Jawan Colony, G.K. Colony and Ammuguda produced some of the best footballers of the country. There was a craze. I began playing football using a tennis ball,” says Sekhar, reminiscing about the time when he worked in Allwyn and got job offers from DRDL, Railways and even Police Department.

But when Sekhar was playing, the glory days of Hyderabad football were long past. But in a different era, Hyderabad was a powerhouse of football with players like Peter Thangaraj, Tulsidas Balaram, Syed Abdul Rahim, Victor Amalraj and a host of other kicking ball and making their mark. The peak of that success story was in the 1950s.

It had peaked in 1951 when India beat Iran 1-0 in the Asian Games final to bring home the Gold Medal. Coached and managed by Syed Abdul Rahim, the Indian team had multiple footballers from Hyderabad. Rahim found a ready backer in IPS officer Shiv Kumar Lal as various city teams in Goshamahal, Bollarum, Mallepally and Barkas tried to match moves. In 1956, the police stadium became the permanent haunt of footballers of the city. It was the same year when in Melbourne Olympics, the Indian team coached by Rahim reached the semifinals losing to Yugoslavia. The Indian team had in its ranks Tulsidas Balaram, Shaik Abdul Latif, Noor Mohammed, Peter Thangaraj and Mohammed Zulfiqaruddin. Then there were legendary players like Victor Amalraj and Syed Nayeemuddin who inspired a generation of footballers. Syed Nayeemuddin won both the Arjuna Award and Dronacharya award for his role.

“Kannan was a forward player. Thangaraj was a goalkeeper and his brothers also played top notch game. My brother K. Narayan also played for AP. Many people think we played for jobs. No. We played because we loved the speed and skill of the game,” says Shekhar.

Now, the football grounds have shrunk or disappeared. The football ground at Goshamahal that was inaugurated by the first Chief Minister of Hyderabad State after Independence B. Ramakrishna Rao is now a vast heap of building debris, sunken ground, concrete pillars and shelter for the workers ringed in by a blue tin sheets. This is where the new Osmania General Hospital is coming up. “People used to play football but other police events also used to happen. I used to go for a walk there,” recalls Omar Khan who has a scrap warehouse in the locality.

A little distance from Goshamahal is Mallepally, one of the planned localities in Hyderabad. “Football thrived in Mallepally, and the neighbourhood produced five international players, four Olympians and eleven national players,” architect Anuradha Naik wrote after a survey she undertook in 2013. Now, the playgrounds exist, but it is difficult to find footballers there.

A world away in Gachibowli, motorists and pedestrians get a shock of blue with towering paintings of footballers. This is perhaps the only reminder to the city that the biggest tournament of the beautiful game is underway in Canada, Mexico and the United States of America.