In Goa’s first int’l in eight years, fans stay home as India plays must-win game before empty stands

Margao: An international football match returning to Goa after eight years should have been a cause for celebration. Instead, the empty stands told a different story, particularly in a place where football has been accorded the ‘state sport’ status.

India’s all-important AFC Asian Cup 2027 qualifier against Singapore at the Nehru Stadium, Fatorda, on Tuesday was watched by a handful of spectators. According to sources, 1,008 tickets were sold, while the official attendance with complimentary passes was recorded at 2,036.

The capacity of the Nehru Stadium has been pegged at 19,000, which means approximately 11% of the stadium was occupied with fans.

The poor attendance raised questions: where have the fans gone? Why have ‘football-loving’ fans been so indifferent to a game where the national team needed them the most?

“Football attendance in Goa has been on the decline for a while now and got worse after the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Goa Football Association (GFA) president Caitano Fernandes. “The numbers (for games at Fatorda) show far from satisfactory attendance. If you look specifically at tonight’s game, I think the school exams played a big role in fans staying at home.”

Goa were allotted the game after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) rejected Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru due to poor condition of the turf. Fatorda last hosted an international match in 2017, when India drew 2-2 against Myanmar in an AFC Asian Cup qualifier. The official attendance was 5,546.

“There was hardly any publicity about India’s game against Singapore,” said Fatorda-based Dominic Paes, who watched from the west stand. “Until three days ago, tickets were not available, and there were no physical box offices where fans could buy tickets. Goans are not savvy with online bookings. But, everything considered, I expected a better crowd. What we saw at the stadium is shocking.”

Crowd attendance for football matches, even when foreign teams are involved, has been on a steady decline in Goa.

When GFA hosted the Bhausaheb Bandodkar Memorial Trophy last year and invited top-tier clubs from Argentina and Australia, the response was so poor that the organisers had to keep the gates open and provide free entry for the semifinals and final.

FC Goa, the state’s representative in the top-tier Indian Super League (ISL), had an average attendance of 8,500 last season. At one stage, the numbers were so low that club CEO Ravi Puskur had to personally write to fan clubs to galvanize the crowd.

“You can consider this a plea or an outburst or anything you may see fit, but for me to continue to get the owners to be as invested as they are today in the team, we need to show that the fans care,” Puskur wrote to the two official fan clubs.

This is quite a drastic change from 2015, when FC Goa made it to the ISL final. Fans stood in long queues overnight to buy tickets. Many happily paid five times the actual price to find a seat for the final against Chennaiyin, which the hosts lost dramatically.