[1]On the 7th of October 1994, Blackburn Rovers were sitting pretty at the top of the league, bolstered by Jack Walker’s healthy investments and Kenny Dalglish’s tactics.
They went on to win the 94-95 league on the last day. 17 relatively painful years later, they’ve been relegated once and made it back up, had numerous managerial changes, and appeared in an advert, (one that will haunt David Dunn and co. for life), for a processed chicken company in India, their current owners. The Venky’s group arrived as a bolt from the blue, with little know-how of the region or the club, but with promises for a better future.
On 7th of October 2011, a Blackburn side became the first Premier League club to play a match in India when they beat Pune FC 3-0 at the Balewadi Sports Complex in Pune. A commercially driven meaningless friendly if the irate Rovers fan are concerned, but an interesting turn of events for Indian football, which has had little to cheer about in the past few years.
Corrupt and disinterested administration, pathetic infrastructure, players that lack the physical or technical abilities to compete even in Asia, and a massive potential fan-base that prefers and covets slow moving, less physically demanding sports like cricket.
So, the gradual awakening of this population to a sport demanding far superior skill-sets both physically and mentally is an interesting transformation to observe, and one that can hopefully be sustained.
This change may well take over a decade; and there are a hundred busted JCT Phagwaras for every rich daddy’s lizard- badged Pune FC; but slowly and surely Indian football will reach a point when the potential tours of a Chelsea or a United will demand a scaling up of infrastructure and open the floodgates for investments thereafter.
Links:
[1] http://103.241.136.51/blackjpgcropdisplayjpg-740