G+A & The Death Of The №10 — Is The Art Of Football Getting Lost In The Data?

The 2006 FIFA World Cup, I had just finished my class X examinations along with the undiluted pressures & stress that the class X ICSE examinations in India are built up to be for 16 year olds across the country; perhaps the earliest introduction to the nature of success & failure in a make or break world.

The turbulent preparation for those “make or break” exams as they’re touted at that impressionable age, had got to me; I sneaked out of home two weeks before the board exams & smoked a cigarette for the first time.

I rushed home with a head rush I’d never ever felt before & slept perhaps the longest I’d ever slept in my life as a teenager up until then.

CUT TO:

We played at Barnes International School, in Devlali, Maharashtra in the ICSE Anglo-Indian U16 tournament, dubbed “Anglos” by us just after our board exams finished. I was a right winger back then, I had played for my school (St. Mary’s ICSE, Mumbai) since the age of 9. Starting out as an inside forward in a 4–3–3 wearing the no. 9 jersey of my favourite striker Ronaldo Nazario. Of course at the time, it was just called “left-out” in school, or an LF. But I was skillful, lightning quick & could finish in those early years.