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“I don’t like cricket and I don’t play it” said M, a young boy in his teens as he stood watching two teams pursuing a football in the middle of a lit street. “There are not many cricket fans here; most of us are football fans…Messi, Ronaldo, Neymer…are our heroes”
This came as a shock in a cricketing country like Pakistan, where everyone and anyone is a cricket fan. But not this young boy and his friends from Lyari for whom football is a passion and everyone has a football team they support.
Who hasn’t heard of Lyari? It has always been in the news mostly for all the wrong reasons. At one time it was considered to be the most dangerous places in Karachi. All one heard was of the power struggles between drug lords and bloody gangsters that resulted in many deaths.
Such news conjured horrific images of the area, and many strange myths were stitched together making the people wary of the area. The majority of Karachi’s population considered Lyari - the oldest part of Karachi where most of the population used to live - a no-go area. But now things have improved say the people of Lyari thanks to the operations carried out by the Rangers and Police.
Now the area is quite peaceful and life is going back to normal after almost a decade of violence, the only reminder of these are scars visible on several buildings. Lacking basic facilities, Lyari stands out with the immense sporting talent that is struggling to make a mark in sports in Pakistan. Football and boxing are passions shared by the majority of the population of this area.
Street football is a major event in Lyari especially in Ramadan when football is being played in almost every street cheered on by fans. Many of these matches are played on streets right outside the People’s Stadium which as the name implies was made for the people but seems to be silent as if sleeping with its floodlights getting rusty. Police personnel guarding the stadium watch the enthusiasm of the players and fans through the night.
This stadium has seen very little football as only a handful of major tournaments have been played here. Lyari’s young players yearn to play in this stadium and to practice matches as well as tournaments inside the stadium. Until then they will have to play on the streets of Lyari.
On the night when we met these young footballers the area was facing loadshedding but this did not stop the matches which were on full force – as every team wanted to reach the final to be played in the last days of Ramadan. Generators powered the lights surrounding the ‘football field’ – the street and the fans were standing in all around cheering their teams. Their passion was infectious.
Our young friend M informed us, “I love if Pakistan wins the (ICC) tournament but I don’t play cricket. I am a footballer and I love it to death.” His passion was evident as his eyes lit up with a strange mesmerizing fire giving an interesting character to his otherwise expressionless face.
14- year-old M was waiting for his match to begin. Replying to a question he said, “Most children play football here – we have tournaments during Ramadan. The finals will be held on chand raat where the teams will get their medals.”
The footballers come out to play after iftar and a number of matches are played late into the night as the teams try to outdo each other supported by the cheers of their fans, who come out in droves regardless of the time. The teams wear uniforms and use gear that their clubs or they themselves have provided. They have makeshift goals – extremely small nets maybe more than a couple of feet high.
Despite the lack of facilities, Lyari has many football clubs that train players and who then participate in domestic matches and also internationally.
“Why doesn’t the government give us any attention?” Asked one of the young players, who had just played brilliantly and scored several goals for his team. “We have such great players in Lyari – we have boxers and footballers – who would give Pakistan a chance to participate in international events. We would bring a lot of medals for our country.”
His friend, S added, “Lyari has a lot of boxers who have not only played a lot of national matches but have also gone abroad and won many medals. We also want our footballers to play internationally. We have many great coaches like Coach Javed Jan who is a boxer and football coach all we want is the proper environment and with the proper gear.”
It won’t be wrong if we call Coach Javed Jan a living legend as far as Pakistani football and boxing is concerned. He has not only won several medals in international tournaments for Pakistan and has been working to train young talent in Lyari and in other places.
“I have a passion for these sports and have won several medals internationally. Now I want to train the aspiring players in both fields. The only problem is that these games have no support by the authorities. All that you see here – players’ uniforms, shoes footballs, nets and goals are all provided on self help basis. And even though our youngsters know that they may not be able to reach international matches, they have so much passion to play these games that nothing deters them.”
Coach Javed Jan says that many youth may have taken the wrong path in the past but now they have been given a better direction – the path of sports which coach says is an addiction that is healthy. He was also enticed by people when he fell on hard times after being sacked from K-Electric in 2010 and he was literally on the brink of starvation. He had protested against this treatment by burning his medals he had won for his country in front of the Karachi Press Club but no one helped him.
He says he was invited by various factions to join them and been rewarded beyond his dreams. Many others had taken this offer but Coach says if he was a weaker man he might have crumbled – seeing hunger in your children’s eyes is not easy to bear and can drive people to desperation – but he felt he had been sent here for better things and he would rather he and his family perished than become toys in the hands of negative forces.
And then fate smiled at him again and he was able to earn an honest living but he was determined to train aspiring football players and boxers.
“Lyari has some of the greatest boxers and footballers but unfortunately this talent is lost. If these games had patronage we would make a mark in the international arena as well and prove to the world that we are not only good at cricket but also have some great football players and boxers,” added Jan.
It is true that the government pays little heed to these games. Building a huge stadium will not help the players of this area unless they have funds to buy proper equipment and gear for the games, and play tournaments at the national and international level.
Nurturing this nursery of players and organizing domestic football matches – inter and intra-provincial matches – will have a good impact all around. This will not only help in the economic uplift of Lyari and also help to revive the sports industry and maybe help boost exports of sport equipment again but also help improve the image of Pakistan in the world.
Photography: Shahzaib Ali
