Watch Ground Zero | How Mizoram gets its kicks

The landscape of Mizoram isn’t made for ball games. Most of the terrain is hard, hilly or sandy, and lacks grass. But there is absolutely no lack of love for football in this tiny State of India’s northeast region. At least six Mizo footballers have been called up to play for the Indian national team, while 54 Mizos played the I-league last year. And the laurels have been pouring in. In the last decade, Mizoram has won the inter-State Santosh Trophy and starred at the National Games, while Aizawl FC, Mizoram’s largest football club, won the I-league last season. Mizoram is a tiny underdeveloped State with a population of just over 1 million. What explains its rich harvest of football talent? For one, Mizoram’s emphasis on community.

In the mid-1980s, the State saw an end to insurgency, the start of social peace, and the genesis of Aizawl FC. And thus was born a new generation of football enthusiasts. The seed of football craze is sown in the hinterland of the State — every village or hamlet across its 8 districts has a football field of some sort, where the games get quite competitive. But without an effective domestic structure to organise official tournaments, how is the young Mizo hobby-footballer to launch into the professional circuit? Enter the Mizoram Football Association.

When “Tetea” Lalnghinglova Hmar took over as MFA secretary in 2010, he focussed on building a proper professional league, improving the standards of coaching and refereeing, and established an eight-team Mizo Premier League in 2012. Again, most of the teams in the league are community-owned, nurturing a strong sense of affiliation among locals, and player salaries are paid by the people living in each area — either through well-to-do local patrons, or good old door-to-door fundraising. And the sport gives back to the community by fostering a population of healthy disciplined youth free of vices.

Standing tall as an example of working hard to fulfil a dream is Jeje Lalpekhlua, Mizoram’s top footballer, who grew up training himself in a village called Hnahthial, and now plays for Chennaiyin FC, and has tasted success playing as forward in the i-league as well for the Indian national side.

His latest dream is to play at least one season abroad. In the meanwhile, he is determined to inspire and build the new crop of Mizo footballers. One of these is 21-year-old Isaac Vanmalsawma, who has already played for India under-19, FC Pune and got a call-up for the national team, and helps organise football summer camps for youngsters in Hnahthial and neighbouring villages. Lalpekhlua has also helped the Hnahthial Football association secure funds to lay a new ground with artificial grass, the eighth such football ground in Mizoram, for which some villagers voluntarily gave some of their individual land holdings free of charge.

The Mizoram government has also pitched in. It installed the State's first artificial turf in Aizawl’s Lammual stadium in 2011. Since 2016, the Tata Trust has partnered with the government to provide grass-roots-level training to children. However, while the absence of a significant corporate or financial support does hurt the flight path of Mizo football, as Tetea says, Mizo villagers and townspeople do not consider the game of football just as a leisure activity, they see it as a community-bonding effort. If love is what makes the world go round, Mizo football has made this motto its goal.