India Sports Tribune

HYDERABAD, INDIA: Hyderabad Football Club, which shut down earlier this year, have left a lot of misery in their wake. The club, purchased by the BC Jindal Group in 2024 after former owner Varun Tripuraneni was on the brink of bankruptcy, have now rebranded themselves as Sporting Club Delhi. The club had won the 2021-22 Indian Super League Cup.

The owners, hailing from the capital city, had given the Yellow and Black precisely a season to get their act together. Whether Hyderabad’s fortunes would have changed had they ended a tad better than the 12th position they occupied by the end of the 2024-25 Indian Super League season is up for conjecture.

With the city now bereft of a top-tier football club, a vacuum has arisen that nothing can fill. The club were the backbone of a fledgling sports economy, especially in the western part of the city, where they were based, and with their departure, several livelihoods are at stake.

The club, admittedly, had few admirers away from the western belt of the city, including the Maidaan in Gachibowli, where they played their home games, but the significant role they held in the former cannot be discounted. With their leaving, hundreds of professionals are staring at a blank future.

Aqeeb, a part of the security agency which used to supply personnel for Hyderabad’s home games, admitted as much in a conversation with the Tribune.

“As long as the club was here, we were guaranteed employment for the best part of six months (over the course of the ISL). And now, with it gone, we do not know what to do. We only have part-time work at weddings, functions and minor sporting events, and are struggling to make ends meet. The presence of the club and the ISL gave us guaranteed employment,” he said.

A similar issue is faced by the catering agencies that were contracted by the club to be a part of the matchday hospitality programs. An employee of the agency employed by the club, under the condition of anonymity, mentioned to the Tribune that he, along with his colleagues, was finding it difficult to get contracts.

“When the club was here, we were given contracts for a long term, and this helped us secure our own and our employees’ futures. This included regular salaries and wages to our chefs, bearers, waiters and servers. Although the club suffered from financial trouble in between (2022-23 and 2023-24), things were taken care of last season under the new management. Now, alas, we have nothing to look forward to. The futures of several people are up in the air,” he said.

The merchandising sector has also been affected by Hyderabad’s flight to Delhi, albeit partially. While the Nawabs did their best to prevent counterfeit jerseys and club insignia from reaching their supporters, they could not lay their hands on the quick business generated by tradesmen who operated on the footpaths outside the gates of the Maidaan.

These tradesmen, usually hailing from economically-crippled regions in West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, were quick to sense the pulse of Hyderabad’s football frenzy and procured hundreds of counterfeit jerseys, flags and scarves.

While the home team’s counterfeit merchandise itself made waves, their games against East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Kerala Blasters – three of the most popular clubs in the country – generated a lot of interest, which converted into tremendous sales for these tradesmen.

Now, with the ISL moving away from the Deccan, they have been forced to look at other avenues for employment. Ganesh, a tradesman who made a handy profit selling counterfeit merchandise, has now moved on to work on a farm in Moinabad. He told the Tribune that it is not easy getting work, especially if you are a migrant labourer.

“I hail from a village near Balasore, Odisha. When I used to sell jerseys outside the stadium, the craze of the supporters allowed me to make decent money and send it home to my wife and children. Now, with no prospect of football, I had to move on to start working on a farm near Moinabad. However, it is not that easy to get work on farms since the competition is very high. I am also crippled by the fact that my Hindi is barely passable,” he said.

The future of the top league itself is up for grabs, but recent admissions by the All India Football Federation (AIFF) indicate that there could be one starting early next year. This means that while the contracted staff for broadcast, scheduling and management can look forward to being employed again, those in the unorganised sector remain beyond the reach of the federation.

Football, unfortunately, is not just a sport that affects those who kick a ball on the pitch or those who shout instructions from outside. It is, in a country as big as India, the creator of a huge economy that rests largely on a demand-supply chain, along with the spending of supporters who make a beeline for the ticketing counter or watch matches on television.

This economy, although hampered, may get back on its feet across India as soon as the ISL’s new season begins. In Hyderabad, however, all hope seems to be gone. While many feel – and rightly so – that the doom experienced by the Yellow and Black was one of their own making, it has also affected those whose livelihoods were enhanced merely by being in the proximity of the Maidaan.

The city of Hyderabad, which has a rich footballing heritage and is the land of Syed Abdul Rahim, under whom India won the moniker of being the ‘Brazil of Asia’, has fallen on hard times indeed, and the officials concerned are least bothered. The reintroduction of top-flight football in 2019 via Hyderabad FC was expected to jolt the slumbering populace awake, but alas, such expectations remained unfounded.

With reality dissolved in the measly Musi trickling below Purana Pul, all that remains for Hyderabad football is a hope that their I-League club, Sreenidi Deccan, will manage to gain promotion into the ISL. It is in the fanning of such a desire that Hyderabad football’s well-wishers pass their days while sipping endless cups of Irani chai sitting at the marble-topped tables of Paradise.

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