If you’ve been unlucky till now to cajole your friends to play football with you, Turf Meets might be a good ploy to get them onboard
A player passes the ball during a previous Turf Meet in the city
Summer vacations are here, and even though May promises to get only hotter, it barely stops sports enthusiasts from stepping out with their gear. But in the fast life of Mumbai, it usually is not possible to gather all of your friends in the same place and at the same time; and for a sport like football, you need numbers.
Kasa Kai Mumbai, an event-based community, looks into this problem. It brings football enthusiasts together from around the city every day. “As a footballer, it was tough to pursue the sport when I was growing up. There was barely any space to play in the city,” says Chirag Das, the platform’s community manager. And now that there are turfs, there is a difficulty of finding football players. In 2019, the team started organising football matches across turfs. The overwhelming response led them to press play after a long pause during the lockdown.
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“We have a WhatsApp community of over a thousand football lovers from across Mumbai. Once you register yourself, we add you to a group and then form teams. This is a perfect opportunity to socialise with like-minded people and play the sport you love,” he adds.
Age, gender, and your adeptness at the sport do not act as qualifiers. All you need is the will to play. “I experimented with a few groups before trying Kasa Kai, but the ball was almost never passed to me enough to prove myself,” says Rima Ramu, 27. As the only woman in a sport generally dominated by men, she was scared of ruining the game. Her first match organised by Kasa Kai was equally intimidating. But when she was trusted with a penalty shot, she scored. “That gave me the confidence that football is no rocket science. The more you play, the better you get at it.”
Ramu is now a regular at these events. And even though she sometimes feels out of place, she is not afraid of being judged anymore because of the rotation of the players with every match. “Women fear being looked down upon the most. But today, I can say with conviction that football is not a man’s world. And this is a perfect place to pick up the sport,” she adds. The platform organises over 15 matches a week. Its daily matches take place on smaller turfs across Mumbai where five members make a team. On Sundays, the turfs chosen are larger in size and hence, the matches are more interesting with 11 in each team.
Call: 8169343356 (for enquiries and turf locations)
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