Sohail is in a great rush to set up a professional football club in Srinagar. Sohail (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) begs favours from everybody he meets, promises much more than he can deliver and at times lies outright – all to ensure that Kashmir will have its own football team.
The opportunity may never present itself again, Sohail reasons. It’s 2016. There’s a weariness in the air following decades of the self-determination struggle, a desire to scrub clean the region’s negative image, Sohail declares.
Sohail latches on to Shirish (Manav Kaul), a liquor supplier who has returned to Kashmir after fleeing the place following attacks on his Kashmiri Pandit community. Together, Sohail and Shirish set out to shrink the distance between dreams and reality. They recruit Mustafa (Mu’Azzam Bhat) to shape a rag-tag bunch of players into goal scorers.
They also hire Amaan (Abhishant Rana) as a manger, even though Amaan is associated with the hard-line politician Nazir (Adhir Bhat) and is exactly the kind of stone-throwing rebel that Kashmir apparently doesn’t need anymore.
Real Kashmir Football Club is inspired by Sandip Chattoo and Shamim Meraj, the founders of the actual Real Kashmir FC club. The Sony LIV series is developed by Dhruv Narang and written by Simaab Hashmi, Danish Renzu and Umang Vyas, and directed by Mahesh Mathai and Rajesh Mapuskar.
While Sohail is raring to go, the show itself is in no hurry. The creators step on the rocky road to success with patience and care. The money and licences needed to set up operations, the early false steps and mishaps, the clash of egos – there is ample drama across the eight-episode series, but delivered at a normal volume rather than a high pitch.
Similar restraint is exercised in dealing with the trickier aspects of following a typical guts-to-glory story in a zone of brutal conflict. Although Kashmir’s wider reality is treated as something that is best left behind, the Hindi series reflects its setting in small and yet unmistakable ways.
An acknowledgement of loss – of family members, a home, personal dignity – is subtly tucked into the feel-good arc. The arrival of the Scottish coach Douglas (Mark Bennington) and his reaction to his militarised surroundings is a nifty way to say what cannot be openly said anymore.
The emphasis is on positivity, healing and closure, with football as the balm that heals festering wounds while also uniting a diverse bunch of athletes. The team includes Azlan (Anmol Dhillon Thakeria), an experienced footballer who frequently clashes with the coach Mustafa. Some of the other players are at cross-purposes.
Shirish often wonders whether Sohail has severely overreached himself. Amaan is torn between his allegiance to his fundamentalist leader and his growing admiration for the team’s progress.
Some of the sub-plots are needlessly stretched out, interrupting the narrative flow. The oversimplification of Kashmir’s complexities means that the monumentality of Sohail’s mission doesn’t always come through.
The political timidity is evened out by warmth, empathy and a welcome lack of hyperbole. It’s rare to have a show about a rumbustious sport that isn’t screaming from the stands. Instead, Real Kashmir Football Club focuses on the people behind the miracle, creating characters whose journeys eventually matter.
Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Manav Kaul ably lead a fine bunch of secondary actors, who embody the hopes of a battle-scared generation. While Ayyub’s Sohail is a practical dreamer, Kaul’s Shirish grows into the role of a saviour. Together, they score a goal or two for an inter-faith miracle in the valley of strife.
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