Amitabh Bachchan starrer Jhund has been released and is getting a positive response from both, the audience and the critics. In the movie, Big B is playing the role of a football coach named Vijay Barse. However, do you know who he is?
Vijay Barse is the man who started Slum Soccer in India. He had appeared on an episode of Satyameva Jayate which was hosted by Bollywood actor Aamir Khan. In the show, Barse had revealed that he used to work as a sports teacher at Hislop College in Nagpur when he once saw a few children playing in the rain by kicking a broken bucket. Following this, he offered them a football. Later, Barse saw another group of children kicking around a tennis ball. This is when he realised that as long as young kids are away on the field, they are away from bad habits.
“I realised that these kids were away from bad habits as long as they were playing on the field. What else can a teacher give?” he said on Satyameva Jayate.
Therefore, Vijay Barse invited these kids to a playground which eventually became famous as Slum Soccer. He called this club Zopadpatti Football. “I knew that all players came from living in zopadpatti/slums, and I have to work for them only so I must continue this name,” he said during his TEDx talk.
The slum soccer soon became extremely famous. As the club grew, matches were being held at the city and district levels. Even the media started to report it and the curiosity among children to join the group rose. Later, even Vijay’s son who was living in the United States read an article about his father in an American newspaper, he returned to India to help his father.
In 2007, Slum Soccer’s national tournament was covered by the BBC as well. It is after this that Barse was invited to Cape Town in South Africa where he met Nelson Mandela too.
Meanwhile, talking about Jhund, the film marks Nagraj Popatrao Manjule’s first Bollywood film. The movie is produced by Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Savita Raj Hiremath, Raaj Hiremath, Nagraj Popatrao Manjule, Gargee Kulkarni, Meenu Aroraa and Sandeep Singh, under the banner of T-Series, Tandav Films Entertainment and Aatpat. It’s a Zee Studios worldwide release.
