Life is a ball

I recently watched both the World Cup Beach football (The pic above shows the beach action between Italy and Portugal) in Brazil in the beaches of Rio on TV of course!!! (Brazil beat Mexico 8-2 in the final)and I also was blessed to watch the European Championship Futsal final between Spain and Italy. Spain won this final 3-1, it was played in Portugal. This two alternative football tools are now becoming a large part of the game. It will not only remain as a developing tool for the 11-a-side game, but it will continue to grow and become a hit in its own right, as Futsal already has. I think Beach football will take time, but go ahead and ask the Brazilians they will tell you alot about both sports.

The former world Futsal player of the year from Brazil Falcao (in yellow shirt in first pic above) said that Futsal was pure skill and he did not have the patience to wait for the ball in 11-a-side.

In fact France have taken a serious step towards this and have a separate division handling Beach football and Futsal and his name is Henri Emille. He immediately recruited Zinedine Zidane as a Futsal ambassador and Zidane played an exhibition match in Futsal against other 11-a-side players and he was a gem while the other players were not use to it.

There is something so primal about Beach football and even Futsal. Beach football playing with your barefeet with sand under your feet. I use to play with my barefeet when I was young (since 6 right up to about the age of 11) for a very long time trying my best to navigate my way through sand,grass, rocks, tree roots and a big brickpathway here in Subang Jaya, Malaysia.

This town was called Subang Jaya in a road section called SS12. I was a pioneer (together with some other guys) there moving when i was six, but these guys left, but others came and they stuck longer Names like Philip, Santosh, Paulin, Paul, Beng Kai, Pugan, Gopi,Michael, Mohandas, Sunny,Kumar (Subang Kumar), Royston,Prem (my brother) Kenneth,Shamendran etc will not ring a bell to many of you all, but to me they were as familiar as Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry or David Beckham.

Day in and day out we would play on this small field, we would pray for it not to rain. There were times when I got a beating from my parents because i did not want to go out with the family because I wanted to play football.

Most days we would play until dark and the final whistle would be the Muslim prayer call of Azan Magrib. Even this sometimes would fail to bring us back on time until our parents would arrive at the field with the cane.

This field was special when I watched both the Beach football and Futsal finals I realised something, where else can you play Futsal and Beach football at the same time? Here at SS12 Subang Jaya that is exactly what we did. We had tree trunks as goal posts and our goal posts had three posts! Strategically we had a fence at the back of the goal posts and this was to us the football net. After watching Brazilian, Italian or English football in the evening we would go and play there and try to simulate what our heroes did on TV, the good things of course not the play acting or cheating (how times change).

The field was unique we developed partnerships on the field and most importantly friendships. I learnt a lot of skill from this small field. I am a coach today and yet though 37 I can still hold my own against guys who are about 15 years younger than me, why? Because I survive on trickery, what I lack in pace I substitute with skill, this field made me a player, it established awareness, vision, touch and spatial ability.



Just two weeks ago my cousin Kumar came from Australia for holidays and together with two other cousins Siva and Saravanan we played Beach football at this beach called Cherating, it was fun. Though we were devastated when we saw that this beach had changed for the worse we were glad to see two goal posts on the beach and we played two on two. It felt really good, though tiring it was fun. I had sand kicked into my eyes by Siva, but I still won with Saravanan or also known as Wayne Rooney on my side. To me something so primal came out of this. I enjoyed it guys, thanks and Kumar we will wait for you again, and Saravanan well the private message for you..."He is a strong lad, he will bounce back." Siva see you around.

When I saw Brasil play beach football it was awesome, even more stunning was the goal scored by Mexico straight from the start and Brasil scoring straight away from the restart! In the Futsal final when I saw Spain playing Italy, the Spaniards were leading 2-0 and little time left, the Italians decided to throw all the men up (as this is five-a-side)the goalkeeper came up and scored. Then they switched immediately by bringing the goalkeeper out and putting a striker as a goalkeeper so he can go up and take a better shot!

It really reminded me of the things we did in that park in Subang Jaya, I remember one of us saying "I am switching I want to play goalie you are no good" or when we scored the other team came on and scored again as soon as possible as it happened in Subang Jaya many times and I am sure every where else. We even did the same thing where the goalkeeper would come up and try to score.

I cannot go on in this blog without mentioning my late best friend Philip, we were so good that they had to separate us, we could not play on the same team. Somehow when I take the ball I just knew he would be there and I would sometimes give him a cheeky backheel. Sometimes we would go all the way to the goal and would not score saying this is too easy!! This is when we were separated.

We were best friends though and in that there is no separation, that partnership on the field can never be replicated, I might never be a world class player, but I had a world class partnership with my best friend Philip, something the great partnerships in world football will kill for, sorry that cannot be replicated you need to be buddies from the age 0f 6 to 28 or forever, i will never forget you Philip.


Today I still sometimes bump into my childhood friends, like ghosts they appear. I still have one member of the "crew" left with me, my good friend Gopi. The last few years we reconnected back, but we did not have a crew. So Gopi talked me into going to the Futsal courts in Petaling Jaya (the city) and Subang Jaya on some days hang around the courts hoping some guys playing there would not have enough players!!!

Our sob story to these guys would be; "The guys were supposed to turn up, but something came up and our buddies could not make it, so do you have enough players? Can we play?" We would do this everytime like a standard pick up line on some lady, but we would take turns in asking randomly and sometimes we would argue as we forgot whose turn is it to ask randomly, but it worked like a charm.


We finally settled with a crew we play every few days a week.
While i and Gopi still play everyweek at the futsal courts, We feel like two survivors steering a ghost ship.

We take the hell out of them for not making the right move or the right pass. Like a captain and commander, with a different crew, who don't want to abandon their ship we keep at it, we keep going because maybe just maybe we are trying to recreate that past, that past that is so sweet that it will never comeback. That park where we played now has a seesaw in the middle together with a bench, that was the day football died in my neighbourhood, in the late 90s about the same time Philip passed away.


In the end this long blog was not just about Beach football, futsal or football, but it was what this sport can bring out of us, what we developed together and how we bonded. I am sure my story is not the only unique one, I am sure you have a story like this, but in the end football is truly what people say it is, the world's greatest game.