Barefoot Boys

Eleven men, playing without boots on their feet, showed a country what freedom felt like, long before its citizens were free. This is their story.

It’s 1857. British soldiers play football in the barracks of Bengal, but Bengalis—with their “delicate limbs”—aren’t welcome to play ball. How could India come to be known as “the Brazil of Asia”? In this episode, we meet the Immortal Eleven.

We meet Nagendraprasad Sarbadhikari, founding father of Indian football. He showed Indians that they could not only express their masculinity, but also beat the British at their own sport.

Nagendra marries into the Sovabazaar family, and starts a football club in its name. The British are baffled when the Indians show up…barefoot.

Three royal families set out to find a proper setting for a football club, and find it in the Mohun Bagan marble palace. Bagan’s start is rocky, but the winds of change—sporting and political—start to gather speed.

Former army man Sailen Bose shakes things up at Mohun Bagan, kicking (literally) the players into shape. The British decide to partition Bengal, in furtherance of the strategy of ‘Divide and Rule,’ but Bengal rises in protest. For inspiration, people begin to look to indigenous scientific innovators, nationalist writers and…footballers.

A revolutionary terrorist bomb attack on a British magistrate in Muzzafarpur goes horribly wrong. A fired-up Mohun Bagan wins their way into the IFA Shield; politics can’t help but spill onto the field.

No longer content with winning tournaments like the Trades Cup, Mohun Bagan set their eyes on the real prize: the IFA Shield. Sailen Bose scours the gullies of North Calcutta to identify talent, and captain Shibdas Bhaduri proposes an audacious tactical overhaul.