The FIFA Fairplay anthem blared through the speakers, piercing through a silent, cold evening breeze in Aizawl, prompting two lines of kids aged eight to 14 to run onto the Rajiv Gandhi stadium. The tune blares multiple times a day, for around 40 days a year, marking the start of games in the RFYC Naupang League, the kids’ football league, where the next generation of footballing talent for the country is being nurtured.
For a sizeable portion of the country, Mizoram brings out a vestigial memory of a blob in the northeast region of the Indian map from geography classes. Little is known about the State other than being a hilly, cold, and beautiful part of the country. Those with a sporting disposition might just be aware of Mizoram’s biggest cultural export: football.
The biggest calling card for Mizoram football has been Aizawl FC’s fairytale I-League triumph in 2016-17 that beamed a bat signal towards the region and its football acumen to the public. A lesser-known fact is that over the past decade, Mizoram has produced 13.41% of the pool of players in India, second only to neighbours Manipur (17.58%).
The State has two players – Jeje Lalpekhlua and Lallianzuala Chhangte – who have won the AIFF Player of the Year three times between them and the last outing of the Indian national team in 2024 featured four players from the State. From 2002, when the State had zero representation in the national team, it now accounts for over 10% of all the minutes played. All this showed two things.
One, Mizoram has a vibrant football ecosystem. Footballers have long remained heroes of their localities as they represent the local ‘veng’ pride in local tournaments. In a region with little to offer in the way of lucrative jobs owing to the lack of major companies, football has proven to be a social ladder both as a potential profession as well as an avenue towards government jobs and better higher education.
Two, it has a football association and government keen to facilitate the sport’s growth despite the limitations and challenges that come with being a small, remote, geographically inconducive, and financially backward State. The Mizoram Premier League was the first State league in the country to stream on an OTT platform. So when the Reliance Foundation zoned in on Mizoram for their pilot football development programme, it was a “dream wedding.”
“We knew we were doing something right because Reliance wanted to come in and work here,” admits Lalnghinglova ‘Tetea’ Hmar, Minister of State for Labour, Employment, Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Department, Sport & Youth Services Department and Excise & Narcotics Department. “It was a situation where you have a potential investor in a ready market. What Mizos needed was administrators and guidance.”
The Reliance Foundation launched the RFYC Naupang League in 2022. The programme runs across four regions in Mizoram. Aizawl and Champhai have 12 teams who play a minimum of 33 games per season in each of the U-8, U-10, U-12, and U-14 age categories. Lunglei and Kolasib district has eight teams playing a minimum of 25 matches every. Everyday matchday has 48 games across age groups in Aizawl and Champhai and 30 in Kolasib and Lunglei.
The football field is divided so that all four age groups of the two teams facing each other play simultaneously. The U-14s play nine-a-side in one half. The other half is further fractionated with the U-12 playing seven-a-side games in one quarter and the U-10s and U-8s playing five-a-side games in the other quarter. All the games last for an hour after which the next fixture starts. The league tables and statistics are meticulously maintained, ensuring that each game has some jeopardy riding on it. Winning and losing means something for the teams.
To further increase the match experience for the kids, the Inter-District Championships are conducted with the winning team of each age group from the four districts along with the ‘best of the rest’ teams from the same sections playing to decide the district champions adding a further minimum of seven games per team. The scouts then pick the best players of the U-12 and U-14 teams, along with coaches and staff, for an exposure trip to Reliance Foundation’s facility in Mumbai where they train along with their elite Young Champs programme.
“To give these kids game time and match practice alongside training is the bare minimum that we should be providing,” says a Reliance Foundation spokesperson. It’s a fair observation and far from reinventing the wheel.
When Japan started its vision for football development, it did so with a 100-year plan that focused on grassroots development. Around a quarter of the way through their plan, the team is already a regular at the World Cup, pulls off wins routinely against European teams, and has players peppered around European leagues, which is the epicentre of top-level football. It all started with a strong base.
A child in Japan plays over 40 games a year via their school and club football programmes. This cycle of preparation-performance-recovery-preparation forms the bedrock of their success. Former India international Renedy Singh once recalled playing against Japanese and Celtic midfielder and fellow set-piece specialist Shunsuke Nakamura.
“Nakamura is one of the best I’ve played against. He and I are the same batch, and in the U-19s, India lost to Japan by one goal. Seven years later, we played against each other again in Saitama. We lost 7-0. Just imagine the way they improved,” Renedy recalled in 2020.
The biggest culprit that curtails Indian football’s advancement in keeping with the other developing countries, considering we started at a high level in the 1950s and 1960s, has long remained the lack of competitive fixtures at age group levels. A team plays a little over a dozen games to win the Junior or Sub-Junior National Football Championship. Providing competitive
games for kids thus falls to the State associations whose junior league ranges from tick-the-box
activities to a few earnest efforts.
The minutes on the field for children from around 10 years and above is where the race is lost. Every year, an Indian child falls short by nearly 20 games compared to the top Asian countries and by the time they reach higher age groups and senior level, the cumulative deficit in experience is at time well over 150 games. Not to mention the unofficial games.
Former Bengaluru FC head coach Ashley Westwood had once remarked that Indian international Robin Singh, 24 at the time, was only as experienced as a teenager in England in terms of playing minutes and experience on the football field and hence was still learning decision-making and other game-related movements which would be second nature to a foreign player at his age.
It’s this problem that RFYC is attempting to solve by providing access to grounds, regular competitive games, and training to very young children. The aim is to ensure that they remain engaged with the sport in a fun manner over a sustained period and acquire requisite basic ball skills and a football education.
“It’s about giving football experience via training and competition. From an execution and implementation standpoint, you can engage more kids through structured competition, where kids can learn by playing competitive games,” says an RFYC spokesperson.
“It is a long-term solution and the hope is that we can have these U-6 and U-8 kids stick around long enough that you are left with a group of children [in their late teens] whose football experience is comparable to top footballing nations. This is why programmes such as RFYC Naupang League are important, and maybe it encourages others to start similar ones to help solve this clear problem in Indian football.”
For Mizoram, which had consistent football activities through its locality clubs and associations, RFYC Naupang League has given a structure. Now in its third year, it has over 2300 registered players (over 50 girls) with 184 teams. All four districts have seen an average of 566 minutes for each player, a number comparable to mature football countries.
“RFYC Naupang League will give players games,” insists Tetea. “It is a tried and tested method that worked in other parts of the world, so we believe we can produce more professionals in the future. The ones playing (senior football now) never had this type of training and coaching.”
“More competitive games means the players can learn about things we can’t teach in training sessions,” admits Lalrindika ‘Dika’ Khiangte, former footballer and coach with RFYC. “Before RFYC Naupang League, there was an MFA grassroots programme but with 3000 kids. They couldn’t even kick the ball because there were so many. Because of the RFYC Naupang league, many academies and locality teams have started.”
Dika himself has been a beneficiary of the league. The coach was in Punjab, away from his family, and his wife lived in Assam with one of their twin children, the other was in Mizoram with grandparents. The RFYC Naupang League reunited his family. And Dika is keen to give back. “I once had aspirations to be an I-League coach, but my state needs me. Mizoram needs this programme,” he insists.
The league has increased coaching opportunities severalfold, with 12 coaches working directly with the programme and several others coaching the teams and participating in workshops, clinics, and coach education courses. Many multitask by holding multiple jobs and coaching, such as Alan Sailo, who coaches New Hof School in RFYC Naupang League and works as the strength and conditioning coach for I-League side Aizawl FC, or Zara, who balances his time coaching and assisting his local team with his job as a reporter for Vanglaini, Aizawl’s leading newspaper.
The situation is the same for referees. Two dozen officials are deployed across four locations and several more making their way through the licensing courses. The league has also boosted the local economy by creating job opportunities for the locals ranging from location managers to ambulance drivers, physios, nurses, groundsmen, vendors, and photographers, providing over 18,000 hours of work since the start of the programme. Football activities go on for nearly nine months, including weekly training sessions, referee and coach education courses, and clinics and workshops for parents.
At first, the Mizoram Football Association was concerned that the interest wouldn’t sustain over such a long period, but the community has rallied behind their efforts. “We are not great at following through,” one local official had feared. But the response has been remarkable. Parents brave the weather to cheer on their children from the stands, creating an atmosphere in the stadium that can rival some I-League or ISL games. The players, former and current, drop by the stadium at every opportunity to see how their own are benefiting and to motivate the youngsters.
Renguthansangi Rengsi, whose son B Malsawmsanga was the best player in the U-10 category last season, brings her son to the games every weekend from Durtlang, a suburb 45 minutes away. With his team not being a locality-based side and the taxi fare being beyond their means, she learned to ride a two-wheeler just to bring her son to the games.
“He has become active and disciplined since starting in the league. He has reduced time on phones because the coaches told him eyesight is important in football. It has been a great change in him,” Rengsi insists.
She is not the only one who has noticed these changes in the children. Parents universally agree that their children have started to focus more on education since joining the programme as it has been instilled in them that learning languages and being educated is key to becoming a successful footballer in the modern era. The children follow a healthy diet and have inculcated values of discipline, punctuality, and respect from the game. They have improved their social skills and camaraderie. With Mizoram being a border State and the porous lines bringing with it the menace of illegal drugs, they are happy to have their children occupied with a healthy option for the weekend.
They also feel assured that the children are in safe hands. An ambulance and physio are present during the games and training sessions and the Mizoram Football Association along with the Reliance Foundation has taken measures to tackle age fraud. The league requires multiple age verification proofs alongside a digital copy in their database. RFYC has made the battle against age fraud a priority and played a key role in bringing together a handful of like- minded parties to tackle this malaise and even started the Stay Your Age U-15 football tournament.
“A lot of resources we put into player development gets wasted because of age fraud,” says Lalrengpuia, honourary secretary of MFA. “We know that the most important thing at a young age is not the result. The main thing is to spread awareness to parents, coaches, and administrators and convince them that it is about development and not results. We are doing this through the RFYC Naupang League.”
Considering the success of footballers from Mizoram, the impact of the RFYC Naupang League and the programme associated remains to be seen. But the early signs are promising, the league has contributed to the entire sub-junior team for the State. “It was no bias, the kids playing in the league were the best,” admits Lalrengpuia.
The numbers game would suggest that only a fraction of the children will become major stars in the sport. But the hidden impact is a more close-knit society that loves the game with individuals who have learned the value of discipline, hard work, perseverance, and how to overcome failure. Things that will make them better citizens.
And that alone is worth the effort!
[…] Parents are looking at the game not necessarily as a path towards potential stardom, but more so as a favourable lifestyle. A way to keep the children fit and engaged, away from gadgets, and towards a lifestyle filled with social interaction and a sense of community. The kids also learn the values of hard work and respect, the nature of failure and triumph whilst keeping them away from social evils. The RFYC Naupang League is the means to that end. […]