Real men do it barefoot

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My friend Amit emailed me earlier today asking me if I thought this was the single greatest Wikipedia trivia fact ever. Ennis covered this back in 2006 but I think it is worth revisiting in greater detail:

India qualified by default for the 1950 FIFA World Cup finals as a result of the withdrawal of all of their scheduled opponents. However, they did not take up their place in the competition. The Indian players were unable to play as boots were required according to FIFA legislation, and the Indian players were not used to footwear and thus refused. The Indian football team was known to play barefoot during the period. In fact, Mohammed Abdul Salim one of the Indian football players played for Celtic F.C. barefoot.[2] The team has never since come close to qualifying for the World Cup. In the FIFA world cup 2010 qualifiers, India was eliminated in the first round by Lebanon. [Wiki]

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I tried to do a bit of digging and found what I believe to be the oldest organized soccer club in India, pre-dating the 1950 World Cup. It is Mohan Bagan.

If you go to this site and look at some really old pictures you can get a glimpse of their feet. Sure enough, they play barefoot.

1911 IFA SHIELD WINNING TEAM (beat the Yorkshire Regiment)

But…a picture on the website from 1939 and this one from 1947, immediately preceding the 1950 World Cup seems to indicate they are, at the very least, wearing socks. So what is going on here? Did the Indian National Team remain barefoot while the club team had already transitioned to shoes?

1947 IFA SHIELD WINNING TEAM

Just something to ponder while we all watch American try and upset England today. Also, if anyone is interested in writing a Bollywood script about the 1911 team and how they upset the Yorkshire Regiment please email me. I have a great idea for a movie about a rag tag bunch of Indian futbol players upsetting a bunch of wealthy British players. Looking for ideas about which actors should be involved, but I thought Amir Khan might be a good choice (even though it might be outside of his experience to play a sports character).

19 thoughts on “Real men do it barefoot”

  2. Please to not exclude Indian medical history with your macho football dreams. The less barefoot in the tropics, the better the human development–literacy, etc. Please wear footwear always in tropics!

  4. Talking of men doing it barefoot, another example comes to mind.

    Milkha Singh, who apparently did some bare foot running himself, including at the 1960 Olympics, the ones where he came so agonizingly close to that Olympic medal.

  5. The traditional rivals of the Mohun Bagan Club are called East Bengal which was founded in 1920. I’m no good at posting links, but the East Bengal Club website has a fascinating history of the club.

  6. In the state of West Bengali, football is hugely popular, in some places even more than cricket. And it is not an unfamiliar site to see barefooted boys playing in the fields, especially after a rain soaked afternoon.

    As Texasbrown says, East Bengal is the arch rival of Mohun bagan Club, both founded in Kolkata. The rivalry on the playing field also ramifies to the kitchen. “Prawn” is the mascot for MB & “Hilsa” fish is the mascot for EB. Depending of who wins in a match, the prices of either of those shoot up next day in the markets (link).

    Another important club for the football loving Bengalis is Mohammedan Sporting, founded in 1891 (Wiki) I think Kerala also has a decent football following, one club comes to mind is Churchill Brothers. Most of these clubs hire players from different countries for their regular seasons, Nigerians are common. Found a brief history of the East Bengal club here (link).

  7. I made a mistake. FC Cochin is from Kerala & Churchill brothers are from Goa. A list of football clubs in India can be found here (wiki)

  8. Shivnath Singh holds the world record for the barefoot marathon (26.2 miles): 2 hours and 12 minutes, in Jalandhar in 1978.

  9. USA! USA! USA!

    I love how America every so often casually beats another nation in a sport which the other nation defines itself by while Americans could not care less about that sport (I am looking at you Canada, Olympics prelim defeat). US today had a draw with UK which I am sure has led to a bout of depression in the Brits while the average American is barely aware of the World Cup (ESPN’s relentless hyping notwithstanding)

    Anyway, great start by Team USA. Algeria, Slovenia should be easy. Here is to hoping a quarterfinal berth for the US.

    Yea, thank you ESPN, for the international commentators.

  10. US today had a draw with UK which I am sure has led to a bout of depression in the Brits while the average American is barely aware of the World Cup (ESPN’s relentless hyping notwithstanding)

    Hey. I was as pro-America as one could get, but there was no honor in this game today. The entire game was played on our side of the field and the one goal we scored was blind luck and utter incompetence on the part of the British goalie. Let’s not get too cocky here.

  11. Bengal and Kerala are bigger than quite a few of the football playing nations. Wonder why those states alone cant supply enough quality players to field a decent team even if you ignore the rest of India.

    I honestly fell asleep in the middle of the England USA game. At least we know we have the better goalie than England.

  12. India won the Asian Games in 1951 and 1962 — in the second case, beating South Korea 2-1 in the final. As late as 1970, it won the bronze medal in the Asian Games. So, by Asian, though not world standards, India was roughly competitive until the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, by the mid 1970s, India was not competitive even by Asian standards. The gulf can be seen by India’s 7-1 thrashing at the hands of China in the 1974 Asian Games in Teheran. Probably, the narrower base of Football (as opposed to Cricket) coupled with the poor management of the sport (by the All India Football Federation) meant that India steadily fell behind and was simply unable to keep up.

    Since you are into digging up football related “facts” in India, you might want to do a feature on the Bengali writer and sports journalist Moti Nandi who died early this year. He was good enough (as a writer) to win the Sahitya Academy award. More to the point, he was known for his two football-based novellas: Striker and Stopper both written in the 1970s. You can find a review of them here. Incidentally, Striker seems to have been made into a (Bengali?) movie.

  15. Years ago, it wasn’t an uncommon sight in Kerala to see kids playing barefoot soccer with hayballs.

  16. For some reason Europeans and Americans have hangups about bare feet. As if our toes were delicate wisps that would evaporate away if exposed to the air for too long. It doesn’t make sense. But for our friends in the motherland, I think I have a solution to their problem.

  18. Somebody is proud of USA because of that stupid goal? Did you see that game? Have you ever watched football or are you one of those people that get the football fever during world cup. USA has a good goalie though, I will give you that. Mohun Bagan rocks, I always remember golmaal when somebody mentions mohun bagan. ( ram prasad and lucky)

  19. There s already a film on the legacy of Mohun Bagan…It’s a Bengali film Egaro which means 11