National women footballers at a practice session

French striker Thierry Henry is her role model. Bhaichung Bhutia she dislikes but I.M. Vijayan she admires. She doesn’t have the patience to sit through a film, not even Bend it Like Beckham. But you can catch her practising her skills with the ball for hours on end at the Sports Authority of India complex in Salt Lake or even on the Jadavpur University campus.

That’s Sujata Kar, 26, touted as one of the star women footballers in the Indian dribbling circuit today. Kar, a striker, has netted several goals for India at the international level. Six years ago in February 2000, she and Alpana Sil, a Bengal midfielder, became the first Indian women players to sign a three-month trial contract with German league club, TSV Crailsheim.

Like Sujata, there are several others from Bengal who are adding feathers to the state’s women’s football cap, serving the game in different capacities. This year, Chaitali Pal became the second Indian ? the first being Bentala D’Couth from Kerala ? to have qualified as a Fifa referee. In 1994, Chaitali Chatterjee may have set the ball rolling by becoming the first woman referee in India but Pal has scored higher.

Understandably, she is over the moon. “I worked very hard and was also lucky. I will now concentrate on improving my ranking,” she says, elated. More importantly, she is now above gender discrimination and is entitled to officiate in matches played abroad. “Men and women referees, unlike the players, are on a par, both monetarily and otherwise,” she points out.

Tackling the Beautiful Game, then, it would seem isn’t quite unbecoming of a woman ? although it may demand a different body language. Instead, women today are keen to blow the whistle on the stereotypical image of the World Cup widow. As Chaitali Kar, a stopper and former India captain, says, “Since the World Cup, I’ve hardly let go of the remote. In fact, that has disrupted peace at home.” Bengal coach Kuntala Ghosh Dastidar, on the other hand, seems to have been mentally transported to Germany. “Things will continue to be in a state of disarray till July 9,” she says.

Both on field and off it, the craze for the game among women persists. Even those who have never footed a ball are keeping an alarm clock handy to wake up past midnight and watch the glam boys in action. “My brother is fast asleep so it’s up to me to egg on my favourites at unearthly hours,” says 20-year-old Rakhi Ghosh, a Kaka fan, who has already got dark circles around her eyes.

First held in 1991, Women’s World Cup football enjoyed as much attention. In fact, over 6,50,000 spectators watched the Fifa event in 1999, while nearly one billion viewers from 70 countries tuned in. By 2010, Fifa estimates that the current 40 million girls and women playing football around the world will equal the number of men.

Recalling the time India participated in the first tournament Shukla Nag, the present coach of the Under-17 Bengal team, says, “It was a fantastic experience. I remember the German captain who was a mother of three but didn’t look it, such was her level of fitness.”

Unfortunately, the fitness level among Bengal’s women footballers has gone down in the last decade. Bengal’s women, who were the initial leaders in the game, have been overtaken by their counterparts from Manipur who won the last four national championship finals against Bengal. Today, Manipur footballers form the core group of the Indian women’s national team, along with their rivals from Bengal.

“It isn’t as though there is a dearth of talent in Bengal but we do not have enough resources to nurture it,” points out Debu Mukherjee, project director, Women’s Football Development Project, Indian Football Association (IFA). “Of the 250 registered players, the majority comes from poor families and if they are offered no incentives or even the bus fare and food when they come to practice, how will they be motivated,” he asks indignantly. Even the state government is apathetic to the plight of women footballers like Sujata Kar who are still to find employment.

Chaitali Kar agrees. “When we played, things were better. There was more competition, so we had the urge to improve ourselves. Today, leave alone sponsorships, there is hardly any media coverage of women’s football tournaments. Our players are good but hardly get any incentive to practice.”

Five years ago, Bengal’s top football teams, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, had started women’s club sides, which participated with other teams in the Calcutta Women’s Football League. The final between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan was played out before a 12,000-strong crowd at the Rabindra Sarobar stadium. East Bengal having won, its jubilant fans celebrated the event as a milestone. But that was then. Today, the clubs have disowned their women’s sides owing to lack of funds.

The discrimination between men and women footballers is also evident in the treatment meted out at any national game. While the men are given plane fares or fares for AC-two tiers, women footballers have to travel in sleeper class. Men earn Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 whereas women are paid a meagre Rs 500. Small wonder then that selector Shukla Dutta who has played the maximum number of times for India and has scored 225 goals in national and international matches sounds dejected when she says, “There are so few tournaments, how will the girls get exposure? It isn’t as though they are unwilling to practice but where are the facilities?”

But not all seems to be lost. Hope floats, assures Pradip Burman, assistant secretary, IFA. “We are trying our best to promote women’s football and organise more coaching camps. But it will take time. No change can take place overnight.”

May be he is right. As a first step, a women’s football development programme was jointly conducted by Unicef and IFA last year to increase awareness and promote the game at the school level. But till such time that the cause of women footballers in the state gets a fillip, the likes of Sujata Kar will continue to dream about the cup of life. For them, the World Cup widow is an alien concept. They will always exude a new bride’s passion when it comes to the Beautiful Game.