Heartbroken Kickstart FC lives its dream

Bengaluru: Heartbreak is inescapable in sport. At one point or another, an individual or a team will experience it. And every time one endures heartbreak, it hurts and hurts bad. And for Kickstart FC, it came during their emotionally sapping final game of the Super Division last season. 

“I can probably say that was the most heartbreaking, most painful and also the most devastating time that we had, those last 10 seconds,” Kickstart FC founder & CEO Laxman Bhattarai tells DH. 

Kickstart were seconds away from winning their first crown, but all the work that was done behind the lens that season was undone through a 97th-minute equaliser against Bengaluru FC. 

And the season turned out to be the antithesis of everything success is about - trust the process, work hard, believe, endure, fight and there will be light at the end. However, sport does not owe anyone a thing and Kickstart left the Bangalore Football Stadium a dejected team that evening. 

The pain, however, did not end there. And the aftereffects? Resignations. The head coach and the manager were two broken men who put their papers down, only for the team management to stand up and say, “If one could be the one to take us to the title, it is you guys.”

Nine months on, they were right. At the very same BFS, there were tears again, but this time it was of joy. Kickstart had not only won their first Super Division title, but did so in some fashion – unbeaten and dominant – 18 games, 15 wins, three draws and 48 points. 

“It is not that they (coach & manager) could not win the title (last season), it was because they were taken aback, with many people crying – the players and the family members that were there. It was a really heartbreaking moment for everybody,” Laxman recalls. 

And while Kickstart ended up unearthing many heroes along the way to the title, behind every strategic move, was Raghu Kumar (head coach) and his crew orchestrating the play. 

By flipping the script within a year, Kickstart have signalled they are ready for bigger things. The club is now turning its focus to the next level, with a clear ambition to establish itself as a conveyor belt of talent, eventually helping Karnataka and Indian football. 

“The dream is the Indian Super League. We know the kind of hurdles we're going to face. If everything goes well, we'll be in the I-League soon but developing youth will always be our priority.”

As they continue to nurture their ambitions, the pressing question is: How? Infrastructure, says Founder and Chairman Shekar Rajan.

“Why football needs investment in the infrastructure is that without the world-class infrastructure, you will not have world-class players. When infrastructure falls in place, the rest follows.” 

“We were the first ones to have built our own turf (own facility). We then ran an academy and we were doing well. But, the difference was, with all the money that came, we started building clubs. And the results that we have been getting speak for themselves.”

Belief on a personal level is one thing. Finding a team to work with it is distinctly another. Maybe that's one way to end it, with a voice of who believed it was possible, "At Kickstart, we never say die, we don't give up and we don't take no for an answer," concluded Shekar.