Times of India | 1 month ago | 08-12-2022 | 05:47 pm
When football is your passion, no hurdles can be too high, be it a busy schedule or being tech-challenged. While for veteran footballer Brahmanand Sankhwalkar, the second one was a major hurdle, he didn’t let that get into his way of watching his third FIFA World Cup live! “I knew I wanted to witness the World Cup live when Qatar began preparations for the event, two years back. More importantly, I wanted to watch some top teams play – Brazil, Germany, France, Spain – some of these I had already seen live earlier, but I especially wanted to watch the rising Asian countries play,” says Sankhwalker. But he had to wait till FIFA opened the bookings for matches by draw, and that when he says, luckily, he got some good games to witness including Saudi Arabia-Poland, Wales-Iran, Germany-Spain and of course, Brazil-Switzerland. “Since I am 80% a dud in modern technology, I roped in my friend Lector Mascarenhas, my team mate in 1984; we then made a group of about 5 people and applied for the tickets,” shares the ex-goalie. While several applications were getting rejected, Brahmanand did not lose hope, “after about 25 days, Lector called and said ‘Bulli, we’ve got in!’ I was very happy,” he said. The tickets’ steep pricing was a bit of a challenge, where each ticket cost around `12500, but Brahmanand’s philosophy of ‘we sweat to earn money so we can pay for the better things in life’ worked here as well. Though the formalities to acquire a Hayya card were aplenty, he was impressed with the way operations were conducted once approved. “Though I didn’t get the physical card until I was in Qatar, but when you have the card around your neck, no one stops you anywhere, there was no jhanjhat, everything was systematic - from entry into Qatar, to watching the matches and commuting within the country.,” he shares. The experience of the match itself was something else, he says. And the world cup experience began even before entering the stadium. “When the 32 countries come to participate for the first round, it is a wonderful experience to see the fans of each of those countries come together at one place. There was a lot of space outside the stadiums, for people to freely move, and fans huddled up at their respective sections outside, many of them distributing souvenirs,” he recollects. There was no mutual spectator at the World Cup, as Brahmanand points out, ‘You have to pick a side!’ And once inside the stadium, it was a different atmosphere all together, he shares, “It was so much fun! So much energy! These spectators were very serious about their teams and supported them with full enthusiasm, dancing about, thumping the floors. One of the stadiums is built entirely from shipping containers, right, so you can imagine the thumping sound they were making! It got everyone’s energy higher.” Ask him to pick a team and he quickly says, “I have deep respect for Iran, I believe it is one of the best teams Asia has had over the years, despite the problems they face in their political sphere, the team is always standing strong on the field.”
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