For a sportsperson who has contributed to the country for 21 years, Oinam Bembem Devi has witnessed the journey of women’s football in India first-hand and been blown by its development.
Spending most of her playing career at a time when the national team, in her own words, “lacked a physio, didn’t even have a kit sponsor and had nothing better than trains to travel to major tournaments”, the legend from Manipur, who became the first woman footballer to be conferred with the Padma Shri earlier this week, now sees the women’s team in a far better position with trained staff and exposure trips that boost confidence.
Yet, the veteran feels a lot more still needs to be done to uplift women’s football to its full potential. “The Indian Women’s League should be played. It was supposed to be played in March next year, but we are still not sure,” she told the TOI during a virtual interaction organised by AIFF on Friday.
She also spoke of the inequality, based on gender, in financial remuneration of a footballer and highlighted the plight of footballers who are part of IWL, the premier and only club league for professional women footballers in the country.
“Stakeholders, private companies and other clubs should come forward to support these girls and the financial problems should change. Rs. 50,000-60,000 is not enough for professionals to survive. There should be more sponsors,” she emphasised.
“Also, IWL and the senior nationals are right now the only two big tournaments for women footballers leading to lack in game time. That should also change and more tournaments should happen.”
Bembem, who hoped that her Padma Shri would motivate more girls in the sport, was excited at the prospect of Indian women playing a friendly against Brazil. “Brazil are World Cup (2007) runners-up and ranked No. 7 in the world. Playing against them and also against Venezuela and Chile should give the girls a lot of confidence. Brazil captain Marta is my idol and our girls are lucky to be getting a chance to play against some of the top players and teams,” she said.
Bembem was also impressed with the recent exposure trips that boosted the team’s confidence ahead of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup that India will host next year.
“The confidence of the girls has increased manifold owing to the exposure tours where they played against higher-ranked opposition. I understand that training hard is very important but any team needs to play games. I’m so happy that the girls are getting to play such strong opposition,” she opined.
