Questions arise as Dadra & Nagar Haveli lift U-17 women's football nationals with no local player

The junior category of any sport is the breeding ground of upcoming champions, leaders, legends and a fantastic treasure trove of underdog stories.

One such story reached its climax in the recently-concluded Hero Junior U-17 National Football Championship as Dadra and Nagar Haveli defeated Bihar to lift their first-ever trophy at any level. The tiny union territory knocked out heavyweights like Kerala and Maharashtra on their way to the glory.

Quite a feat to marvel at? Perhaps but perhaps not as well.

If we look at this Ravi Punia-managed side and its journey, it seems inspiring and fantastic from the outside. But peep within and it has an underlying problem quite deep-rooted in Indian football, the problem of exploitation and bypassing of systematic loopholes.

The slight problem we are talking about here is that none of the 20 players that won the Championships belong to this little Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (D&NH), in fact, they haven't even been around to play here. As per the player documents accessed by The Bridge, 17 girls are from Haryana and 3 are from New Delhi.

The above revelation leads us to two conclusions, either there are zero local girls actively playing football in D&NH or these girls are playing in D&NH for a long time and hence they were selected for the team. None of the above conclusions is correct as there are local girls playing in D&NH and these 20 girls have never been to D&NH before this.

This seems like a commonplace practice in India where these 20 girls were issued NOCs by their respective associations and given a makeshift contract of months or even weeks of a club registered in D&NH. With no domicile status required to play in these tournaments, these girls easily played for their adopted state.

"We always used to have posters about trials of School Games as I have represented Dadra and Nagar Haveli twice in the U-19 level. But for competitions like these, we never had trials or any awareness by the local association. This time around also, the team was directly announced without knowledge of any local clubs or players", says Nishita who now plies her trade in Pune for better opportunities.

Another girl who has represented D&NH at the young group level, Sanya says "We get to know about SGFI as it is not under the local association. None of the girls who are playing in the tournament has been around our UT or we have seen them. One day, there was just a poster with the list of players on it. There was no communication about trials and we hardly get to play any local tournaments as there are none."

The above statements clearly suggest that the claim made by the coach of the current D&NH team in this video that D&NH FA is doing some great grassroots work is baseless as the real grassroots of D&NH is totally unaware of what is going on and there are no local tournaments.

Misrepresentation?

When we delve deeper into this situation, we find many other layers of problems sustaining there. The senior men's team of Dadra & Nagar Haveli which participated in the Santosh Trophy this season had only 6 local players and the coach appointed by the association for them met his team directly on the first day of the tournament.

Talking to The Bridge, Abu Osama who has represented D&NH twice in the Santosh Trophy claims, "I have represented D&NH twice. In 2018, the whole team was comprised of players who belong to D&NH. In 2021 the representation has dropped down to 5-6 players. There are no local football tournaments, no awareness and no roadmap about the future."

It is quite astonishing that in the space of three years the local representation has gone down by 66% at the senior level. Did COVID stop players from playing football too?

An ex-football player who now owns a local club called Silvassa United, Radheshyam Rajpurohit explains, "There are many problems to start with. The local football association hasn't conducted any local football tournament since their inception in 2018. Another big problem is the merger of FAs of Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli as both the union territories were merged by the Indian government in 2020."

"The girls from Haryana are not at fault and we have nothing against them but this is unfair on the local players as they don't get the chance due to the lack of opportunities. Our clubs cannot play here as there is hardly anything happening. The players are not aware of what are the national-level tournaments. The FA wakes up 15 days before when they have to send a team to a national championship"

The AIFF website shows one registered club at D&NH which is named Red Devils Football Club which co-incidentally belongs to the secretary of Dadra & Nagar Haveli FA, Nevelle Quintal.

The website of D&NH FA has no communication on their website post-Santosh Trophy dated 28th October 2021. The contact number of D&NH FA listed on the website of AIFF belongs to a random stranger who has no clue about it. Our attempts to reach D&NH FA have been left unanswered till now.

All of these above problems raise a few serious questions but sadly offer no answers. While the girls from Haryana and New Delhi are not at fault here and neither is this any wrongdoing but it is absolutely unfair to the local players and exposes another loophole.

Sport is funny in its own way as the grassroots level tournament which is supposed to be a breeding ground for local talent is won by borrowing players from different states.