CHENNAI: It is not easy for any parent to send off their child thousands of kilometres away. Battling with a kidney condition that was progressively getting worse, it must have been particularly difficult for KN Mangalam to pack her seven-year-old son’s bags as he left for Mohali, Punjab, to pursue the family’s collective dream of him becoming a champion footballer. Last year, after a prolonged fight, she passed away, having spent her last few days with the young boy as she wished.
“She was awaiting her son’s return. It was really hard for her to be away from him. Her last night, she slept beside him as he caressed her to sleep,” says her husband KN Narayanan tearfully. The sacrifices seem to be paying off. Now 11, KN Aswin, was part of the Minerva Academy team that bagged two international trophies within a span of a week last month.
Minerva defeated Brazilian club RS Sports Yellow in the Gothia Cup Boys 12 final in Gothenburg on July 18, which came on the back of another trophy when they won the Helsinki Cup on July 11, defeating the Finnish team to which it had lost in the group stage.
The little champ from Chennai has been training in Mohali, Punjab, since he was picked up by Minerva Academy at a young age of 7. When we met the boy last week, his first visit home to meet his father after nearly a year, he had few words to speak, but he showed us his remarkable skills with the ball.
Narayanan is a fruit seller who sells seasonal fruits, and picks up whatever job that comes his way during other times. He has been supporting him through his football journey since Aswin was perhaps two years old. “I used to bring him to this nearby ground because I liked playing football. Slowly, we realised that Aswin is into the sport and I took him to Mount Football Club in St Thomas Mount.”
Within a few years, Aswin was scouted by Minerva Academy, the only one from the southern states in that cohort of selections.
“It was her dream to see her son reach these heights, and he is doing it much earlier
than we expected,” says the father, full of pride. Mangalam was undergoing dialysis at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital when she succumbed to her ailment. Aswin was scheduled to leave for Punjab in the next three days, which got postponed.
Sending him hundreds of miles away at 7 was a difficult task for both Mangalam and Narayanan. It was his coach at the Mount Football Club, Lokesh, who helped him to do so.
Since he left for Punjab, most of Aswin’s childhood has been spent with the ball. The sport consumes all of his day. He is allowed to use the phone only once a week, when he calls his family back home. “It’s only that day when we can speak to him. When his mother was there, he spent all his time speaking to her. Even now, while hanging up, he’ll say, ‘tell amma I ate, I’m fine here’,” says the father.
According to him, Aswin’s dream is to realise what his mother wanted for him: To be great at the sport. And the boy is clearly not leaving any stone unturned to reach that goal.
“At the academy, we begin practice at 5 am, and then it goes on till 6 in the night divided into four sessions,” says Aswin. They attend classes for
two hours a day, and the rest of the hours are spent footballing.
Aswin’s initial few years in Mohali were hard. One, he did not know the language, and two, there was no one accompanying him from Tamil Nadu. “He used to feel isolated; sometimes he’d sit on the ground and cry. It’s his coaches there who motivated and kept him afloat,” says Narayanan. Now, Aswin is well-versed in Hindi, and has found his mates and a space there.
“The coaches have been very helpful. While I can only speak to my son once a week, if I miss him a lot, I would call the coach. They reassure me,” says the father.
Aswin, whose inspiration is Brazilian footballer Neymar, says all he wants is to represent India at the global stage. That is the same dream that Narayanan has, and Mangalam had. The boy of few words doesn’t look like one who would let them down.
Aswin’s initial few years in Mohali were hard. One, he did not know the language, and two, there was no one accompanying him from Tamil Nadu. He used to feel isolated; sometimes he’d sit on the ground and cry. It’s his coaches there who motivated and kept him afloat, says Narayanan. Now, he is well-versed in Hindi, and has found his mates and a space there