Player Profile: NP Pradeep

NP Pradeep

April 28th 1983.

Country: India

Club: Viva Kerala

Naduparambil Pappachen Pradeep. His contribution to the game is as weighty as his name. NP Pradeep better known as Pradeep, is an attacking midfielder who plays for the i-League outfit Viva Kerala. Originally from Kerala, Pradeep started his senior career with the team of State Bank of Travancore (SBT) in 2002 at the age of 17. Before that, Pradeep started off as a striker playing for the state of Kerala at the U-17 and later the U-19 levels. He then turned himself into a midfielder soon after joining SBT. He represented SBT till 2006 during which he played 56 games and scored 8 goals. During his stay at SBT, he managed to win four Kerala league titles for his club.

After leaving SBT in 2006, Pradeep joined Mahindra United. Incidentally, his record of 56 appearances and 8 goals was repeated at his new club till 2010 when the club was disbanded. He experimented with various positions while at Mahindra and sometimes even played as a full-back. At Mahindra United he was benched for a lot of the season 2008-09 and at the end when the coach Derrick Pereira left the club, Pradeep was visibly happy to see him go. Pradeep, on his birthday in 2009 said, “Last season, I was benched for most parts of the season and that didn’t please me one bit. For me, Derrick leaving Mahindra is good.” Despite all this he managed to win two IFA shields with Mahindra in 2006 and 2008. He also contributed to his club reaching the quarter finals of the AFC Cup.

It was his contribution to Mahindra in the AFC Cup that caught Bob Houghton’s attention. This led to him being called up for the National Squad. Initially he started playing as a left-back for India but progressively he came back to his position of a goal-scoring mid fielder. For the national team, Pradeep actually came into the lime-light post the Nehru Cup 2007. He scored the most important goals of the tournament. He scored the opening goal of the Nehru Cup for India and he also scored in the final against Syria making it the only goal of the game and helping India lift the Nehru Cup for the first time. After the cup, Pradeep became a regular in the starting XI for the English coach and has been proving his worth since then.

Later as Mahindra played him at various positions, Pradeep started losing form. Eventually when the club broke up, he remained a free agent for some time until joining Viva Kerala in January 2011 late in the transfer window. Even in Qatar during the AFC Asian Cup, Pradeep’s role in the team was crucial since India hasn’t produced many attacking midfielders of his kind. To his credit, he has also been tipped by various critics to surpass the former Indian captain I.M. Vijayan considering his talent and skills on the pitch.

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United We Stand: The Story Of An Infant Football Club

FC United of Manchester, The Red Rebels, FCUM are various names of the same club. But don’t confuse this Northern Premier League Premier Division club for the English top-flight giants Manchester United. This club was formed in 2005 after hundreds and thousands of fans detached themselves from United following the takeover by American businessman Malcolm Glazer. The takeover which was controversial in many ways, including huge loans from hedge funds, is still being opposed by Man. United fans in the way of the “Anti-Glazer” Green and Gold campaign. This campaign was launched only recently by the independent Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST). The trust started with an intent of taking over the club from the Glazer family and launched the campaign which has 167369 supporters as on 22-03-2011 08:37 IST. For more information on the MUST, visit http://action.joinmust.org

The Glazers managed to retain David Gill and Sir Alex Ferguson at the club considering the great successes achieved by the duo in all the past years. But this effort didn’t hinder the small group of disgruntled supporters from forming a small club known as ‘FC United of Manchester’. This club is based in Bury, Greater Manchester. FC United started their journey in the English club football on 14th June 2005 at the Gigg Lane ground which they share with Bury F.C. They entered the tenth level of the English club football system which is known as the second division of the North West Counties Football league. Since their formation, the first three years they saw ultimate success with winning promotion thrice in a row and lifting themselves to Northern Premier League Premier Division where they currently play. Currently, FC United is managed by the ex-Macclesfield Town player Karl Marginson.

The club recently came to light when for the first time they reached the first round proper of the FA Cup. They were anticipated to face their parent club Manchester United in some later stages had the former not been beaten in a replay against Brighton & Hove Albion. This young club has a lot of promise and aims to build its own ground before 2012 which will be known as the ‘Ten Acres Lane’. The club has a fund-raising campaign for their new home known as ‘Make it so?’ where it collects pledges and donations from supporters.

The Golden period of this club was from April 29th to September 30th 2006 when they were unbeaten for 22 games in a row making it the longest unbeaten streak for the FC United. The highest recorded attendance was on December 8th 2010 at the Gigg Lane ground where they hosted their FA Cup opponents Brighton & Hove Albion and 6,731 supporters registered their attendance. The endeavour put in by the all time top scorer of FCUM, Rory Patterson was enough for the club to attract the interest of various professional clubs all across Great Britain.

If you’re a Man. United supporter but are anti-Glazer, this is the club you should be aware about. To know more about FC United of Manchester or to support it, visit: http://www.fc-utd.co.uk

-PRANAV MUKUL


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UEFA: The Money Makers

The UEFA Champions League is arguably the biggest club level football competition in the world, where millions of people show their support by coming to these matches. Only last year the attendance for the match between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium was recorded to be 73,170 and the year previous to that when Barcelona won their treble by beating Manchester United at Estadio Olimpico in Rome, 62,467 football supporters registered their attendance. The highest registered attendance in a UEFA Champions League final match has been of 1, 35,000 fans which is in itself a colossal figure.

Seeing these rising figures of attendance, The European Football Association, UEFA, thought of becoming a money minting machine and hiked the ticket prices for this year’s finale at the Wembley Stadium, London on May 28th 2011. The association has been blamed for the overpricing of tickets and leaving fans furious over the prices which begin at £176 for general sale including the booking fee. UEFA announced that it will keep 11,000 tickets for general public at a price of £150 plus a £26 ‘administration fee’. Also, 50,000 seats are reserved for fans of both the finalist teams that will play the match but these tickets are priced at only £80 each. These tickets are categorized under “Category 4”.

The general tickets will have various prices costing £150, £225 and £300 plus the additional ‘administration fee’ which is just like the extra icing on the cake of expensive ticket prices. If we compare these ticket prices to those at Rome in 2009, we can clearly see that the prices have almost doubled since then. The rise every year in the Champions League finale tickets since Manchester United played Barcelona is about 15%. Even the World Cup tickets in South Africa were priced at around £100 each which shows the extraordinary charging by UEFA at Wembley. The UEFA director of competitions Giorgio Marchetti said, “This is the market price. Do you think we would have trouble filling Wembley if the prices were higher? Do you think it would be different? We try to strike a balance between the interest of supporters and the interest of the event. Why should we price the tickets lower than what we think is a fair level?” But the Football Supporters Federation Chairman Malcolm Clarke had something else to say. He thrashed the idea of such humongous ticket price by saying, “These prices are absolutely outrageous and take ticket pricing to an absurdly stratospheric new level.” He empathized with the situation of the supporters by adding, “In a difficult economic climate, not only in this country but across Europe, where supporters may be coming from, this represents disgraceful exploitation of fans.”

Last year UEFA earned a reported £11m at Madrid during the final between Bayern Munich and Internazionale and this year they are expecting to make £14m at Wembley. So, whichever team wins hardly matters to UEFA because it is going to make a fortune. If you wish to show your support, get ready to shell out a couple of hundred pounds.

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