Coach Dinanath, or Coachji, as he is lovingly called, started the non-profit football training Azad Football Club in Faridabad in 1970 with virtually no capital. It is the passion, determination, and grit of this one man which has nurtured the club, named after his guru who fought in the Azad Hind Fauj for over 53 years with no financial backing.
1967
Coachji started playing football in 1967 as a 17-year-old on the Air Force ground in Faridabad. When the airforce station moved to Dabua, he approached the authorities to be allowed to start a football academy for poor kids on this ground.
This is how the Azad Football Club, or Azad FC started. The road ahead was rough, and the entire ground was in shambles; garbage and debris were everywhere, and the earth was hard and dry.
Coachji tackled this challenge head-on. He cleaned up the ground and arranged water to green the land. How he achieved this is iconic.
He got permission to divert a sewage line near the ground and put in filters to clean the wastewater to make it fit to water the field. Since the club was a non-profit venture, Coachji had to pump his own hard-earned money into his dream come true.
It cost him about Rs 40,000, 35 years back just to get clean water to the football field. Even today, he continues to spend seven thousand rupees every six months to replace the water filter.
Dinanathji also dug a moat around the field so drivers would not intrude into the game and planted trees there.
Next in line was buying equipment like balls, shoes, and uniforms for the players. Coachji happily bore the tab of Rs two lakh for all of this.
53 years later…
More than 200 players- boys and girls ranging from 4- 65 years play football at the Azad ground daily. Football training starts sharp at 5 am and goes on till 8 am. The evening timings are 3- 8 pm in summer. Three teams practice simultaneously on the field with dedicated coaches.
What hasn’t changed, however, is the business model. Coachji has retired from his government job but still supports the Azad Football Club with his pension, as he did earlier with his salary. Parents and wellwishers also pitch in with water, fruits, and sherbats, for the players.
Apart from the regular coaching sessions, Azad Football Club organizes four district and state-level tournaments yearly. They also hold a ten-day-long Summer camp during the vacations in June every year. Azad FC hires the very best football coaches to come and train the Azad kids. Each of these camps costs 70-80,000 and is sponsored entirely by Coachji and his supporters.
Starting a football club with no money by itself is an outstanding achievement. However, Dinanath sir’s contribution is even more remarkable because he has sustained and nurtured Azad Football Club for over 50 odd years on virtually his own money.
A day in the life of Azad Football Club
Coachji has appointed himself the chief water carrier of Azad Football Club to keep the players hydrated. He buys and ferries ten big bottles of water daily along with ice for ‘his kids’ every day. He also reaches the ground before time and takes care of any eventuality on-field, apart from coaching the boys and girls with patience and love.
At 67, Coachji remains the brain, heart, and spine of the Azad Football Club. He is ably supported by a team of four coaches today.
“I played state football in 2000, and my family stopped it as they want me to be gainfully employed. After marriage, I have reunited with my first love. My aim is to give opportunities to our Azad family kids to progress in football and get obstructed the way I was not allowed to. And one of our biggest achievements is our women’s football team that we constituted just seven months back,” says Inderjeet Bidhuri, who has been with Azad Football Club for years.
The women’s football team
Forty girls practice at the Air Force ground daily. They walk, cycle, and ride to the ground every day at 3 pm and practice till about 6 pm. Some of them hang around even after six to exercise and play with the boys to perfect their game. These women players have already won medals in two big tournaments- the Sansad games and the Women’s Day match this year.
Girl players get special nurturance at Azad Football Club. Their training is free, and they don’t have to buy football kits.
Most girls come from nearby villages and colonies, sometimes with mothers in tow. It is heartening that their mothers are the girls’ biggest advocates and supporters.
We spoke to one such mother watching her daughter play, sitting quietly in a corner with a dupatta over her head. She says her baby girl has changed almost overnight after joining Azad Football Club.
“She is more confident, her body is stronger, and she is becoming my greatest support system rather than the other way around. I am ever grateful to Coachji for giving her a chance and a ground to play,” says the proud mother.
A few kids whose parents can pay for coaching are trained at a nominal cost of Rs.3,500 annually. But their number is small as Coachji does not want to take his focus off why he started the club in the first place- making football accessible to poor kids.
“My aim is to empower the Azad family kids to play football, not make money,” Coachji reiterates.
Most of these parents have had the unfortunate experience of carting their kids to expensive football academies for months before coming to Azad Football Club and tell Life Beyond Numbers that their kids didn’t learn much even after training for months in those pricy academies due to the lack of both proper training and football equipment.
The road ahead
“Kids nowadays keep tapping away on their mobiles. I want to save our kids from mobile addiction and want more and more kids to join football and build a future,” says Coachji about what he wants to achieve in the future with the Azad Football Club.
Amen to that, and may your tribe grow!