It has taken one object the shape of a globe – or almost – to unify a fragmented Goa, split at many levels, fighting its separate battles, and pushing its own agendas. For a land which has made football the leitmotif of its existence, never has this game unified Goa in as forceful a manner as these two words have – Forca Goa. And as FC Goa is on the cusp of its second tryst with glory, in a league which has seen Indian football come of age, it must know that it has already won.
For the second year in a row – this year even more than the last – a football team with more “outsiders” than insiders has been embraced as ones own. From coach Bab Zico to captain Bab Lucio, each is as Goan as Romeo Fernandes and Mandar Desai. Not to speak of players like Dudu, welcomed, cheered and revered when he burst into the scene as a breathtaking centre forward for Sporting Clube de Goa in their romantic debut year, who is as much a Goenkar as Laxmikant Kattimani, the boy from Cansaulim, a son of Karnataka migrants, now Zico’s first choice goalkeeper. There was a time when Katti, who lived in a small hut by the railway tracks in Cansaulim had partitioned his one room home with a simple piece of cloth to keep his football boots and gloves, the two pairs he had, and knew football will be his path to salvation, glory and above all dignity.
He and his team FC Goa have done much more. They have taken Goa on a path they had forgotten, the path of unity. During the run up to the ISL and as it ran its course and right up to the next ten days of its climatic finish, Goa’s love and affection for FC Goa is the only non-debatable truth in a deeply divided land. The love for the team has cut across the North and South, the Congress and the BJP, the secular and the communal, the corrupt and the clean, football and cricket lovers, the pro-Mopa and anti-Mopa crusaders and above all the outsider and the insider. It is only FC Goa which can get the builder and the environmentalist to sit for 90 minutes and applaud poetry in motion.
FC Goa has made it all so simple. It has made all of us children with simple uncomplicated hearts. It has de-toxed us, cleansed us, even if it’s just for the love of the game and what our home team means to us. Goans have made FC Goa bigger than a football team. It’s a benchmark for achievement, glory, success, and above all pride, of a Goa which can count more glory days of the past than count on similar days in the future. Which is why the success of FC Goa is so important to all those who love Goa. The manner in which came from behind, to top the league, its 7-0 and 5-1 victory margins were not just score lines. They were signposts of dominance Goa so badly desires.
The challenge therefore, for those who run FC Goa is to realise that this is no longer a franchise, a club or a football team. It is a hope pill Goa is drugged on. This brand – if one narrows this down – is strong enough to be a change driver – in education, health, sports, infrastructure and rural development. It should leverage this for the cause of Goa. Winners they already are, irrespective of what happens in the ISL from now on.
It is upto FC Goa to win the biggest trophy of them all, of a real change agent. And that will be the finest Goal we will ever see from this band of extraordinary gentlemen.
