If it's football, it must be Kolkata. Bare feet, shorts, a ball and you have a game in every street corner. And in a small corner of the city is a club - Avenue Sammilani - with an agenda: Identify young talent from the city's poorer neighbourhoods and nurture them for the bigger footballing stage. IBN Correspondent Rudraneil Sengupta visits football's fertile breeding ground.
Raju Sheikh is one of Avenue Sammilani's two hundred odd trainees. Two years ago club members spotted this teenage tea-seller playing football in the city's streets and took him in. Since then the club has been his home and today this 16-year-old is already juggling his dreams and reality.
"I have lost my parents. Football is now both my father and mother," says Raju.
Avenue Sammilani trainees all come from poor families, some even live on the streets. But the hardships of life doesn't dampen their spirits as every morning they turn up at the club to chase a dream called football.
It's a gruelling regimen. The boys train for two hours every morning. Sometimes this is followed up by another two-hour session in the evening. But the boys aren't complaining for they get to train under former national players who have volunteered to coach them for free.
One of the coaches is Shanti Mallick, India's only woman footballer to have been awarded the Arjuna Award.
"I began here and I learnt a lot and now I am teaching the boys all that I have learnt," says Mallick, a feisty women in her early fifties.
A hard taskmaster and a caring mentor, Shanti has to strike a fine balance in tackle both poverty and talent of her charges, making sure one doesn't get in the other's way.
"We want them to learn football. I myself come from a poor family. So I know what it's like. I understand them and don't want them to waste their lives."
The success story of Avenue Sammilani began way back in 1971 when four football-crazy friends got together to team football with social work. Since then the club has consistently churned out some of the best footballers in West Bengal.
Consider this: Eighty-five of Avenue trainees are currently playing First Division football and four others are in the lineups of Calcutta giants East Bengal and Mohun Bagan.
Despite the success, funds remain elusive. But whatever the odds, Avenue Sammilani struggles on, giving dreams shape and helping put boots on the feet of football's future in Bengal.
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