The rise of Bengaluru FC and the reinvention of Indian fan culture

This piece was written by Shubi Arun for Issue 44

It was a night Rakesh Haridas will never forget. After the game ended, he cried and carried five people on his shoulder. “I’m a big guy,” he explained. A collective shock enveloped the Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore as the home fans came to terms with what they had just witnessed. Their team, Bengaluru FC, had been a few minutes away from winning the league title before it was crushingly snatched away.

The game between BFC and Mohun Bagan that night in 2015 was effectively a final. BFC needed to secure three points to win the league while all Bagan needed was a draw. The context behind the matchup only heightened the tension. BFC were the upstarts, a team only in the second year of their existence. Their inexperience in the I-League was in sharp contrast to their ambition; against all odds, they won the league in their debut season. Mohun Bagan, meanwhile, were the behemoths of Indian football. One of the oldest clubs in Asia, the Kolkata-based team boasted a trophy cabinet and following that eclipsed most in the country.

“It was a huge game, the rivalry was getting bigger and bigger. And we won the first season so they were going all out because they hadn’t won it in a long time,” said Haridas.

BFC took the lead late in the first half to send the Kanteerava into a frenzy but an 86th minute equaliser sent the title to Calcutta for the first time since 2001. It’s a night that’s gone down in I-League folklore. Tears that were eventually dubbed the Tears of Kanteerava flowed freely that night in the stands. Haridas refers to the Bagan equaliser as the “86th minute dagger to our hearts”.

Despite the loss, the Mohun Bagan game is one of Haridas’s most special memories as a BFC fan. It was the fanbase’s first dalliance with the soul-crushing pain that comes with following a club. “It made us a lot stronger. The camaraderie only became stronger. We knew that next year we have to come back and the very next match,” he said. “The first match of the next season, we put out a banner that said, ‘We will take back what is rightfully ours,’ and we won the league that season. We wanted that and we got it back.”

It’s tough not to be enamoured by the BFC story. It’s a club that since its inception in 2013 has completely disrupted the status quo of Indian football. In the eight years of their existence, BFC have won a remarkable six trophies, including two I-Leagues and one ISL title. They had won silverware each year until 2020. In 2016, they became the first Indian club to make it to the final of the AFC Cup, Asia’s equivalent of the Europa League.

BFC’s dizzying ascent can be attributed to its strong foundations. When JSW Sports won a bid for an I-League spot in 2013 and set about building a team in Bangalore, their aim was clear – to create a club with world class infrastructure and a setup that could compete with any club around the world. They hired the former Man United trainee Ashley Westwood as head coach and gave him complete freedom to mould the team in whatever way he saw fit. The former Sheffield Wednesday defender who had also worked as a first-team coach for Blackpool and Blackburn in the Championship, replicated the training practices used in the English Premier League and Championship. Westwood brought a level of professionalism that was unheard of in Indian football. Fitness, nutrition and conditioning became crucial tenets of his methodology. Aside from becoming the fittest team in the country, BFC raised the technical standards of the league. Although he left the club in 2016, the club is still moulded in Westwood’s vision.

While the trophies have validated their approach, it is the synergy between their on- and off-field efforts that have made the BFC model the envy of the league. One of BFC’s founding aims was to popularise local football in the city. It isn’t a club run by supporters in the way some Bundesliga clubs are. Rather, it’s a club whose running is centred by its fans. “Since its inception, it was a conscious effort from the players, the coaching staff and the management to break the divide between the club and its supporters,” said the BFC and India captain Sunil Chhetri.

To that effect, the club organised BFC Day Outs at malls, colleges and schools all across the city and held open training sessions to give supporters a chance to interact with the players. The club deployed its social media channels in a way few had until then to grow their community. Twitter AMAs with players became regular features and its Facebook page was used to put out ticketing information and answer fan queries. Communication was made as open and personable as possible. There is the story from the first season of a fan who wrote to the club asking about the status of Australian striker Sean Rooney’s injury and instead of replying, the club had Rooney personally call the fan to give him an update.

“Many of the supporters from our first seasons have gone abroad and moved to different cities, but theirs are still the names we see on our social media on every matchday and it’s that relationship we built in the early days that brings them back to keep backing the club,” said Chhetri.

The club had a comprehensive matchday strategy to pull in the crowds. Half the seats in the stadium were priced at INR30 and INR50 to make attendance easily accessible. Tickets in the West Block stand were allocated specifically to college students and corporates and food was made free. Local football teams in the city were given free tickets and college football captains were brought on board to sell tickets at a 10% commission. Giant screens, the first of their kind in India, were put up in the stadium to watch highlights and replays.

There were matchday programmes in every seat and jerseys and merchandise were sold at the stadium.

Despite all their efforts ahead of their debut, everyone at the club had fears over the turnout for the first game of the season. On the eve of the game, Ashley Westwood and the club’s media manager were out on the streets of Bangalore at midnight, putting up posters.

These early efforts by the club sprouted the West Block Blues fan group. This simple coming together of a group of people who would meet on matchdays and screenings would go on to become such an indelible part of the BFC story. The name is a tribute to West Block A, the stand where they would all sit in the first season. “The idea was to create more of a fan culture, where this is your life. You’re married to this club for life and whatever happens, you’re not going to part away with this club,” said Haridas, one of the founding members of the group.

The West Block Blues are renowned all over the country for their vocal and vociferous support. The chanting is a distinctive feature of the group, with fans singing themselves hoarse through the entire 90 minutes. An opposition goal would only turn up the decibel level in the West Block. This type of unwavering passion for the team irrespective of what’s happening on the field was new to the league.

The group take their chanting seriously; songs are disseminated widely on their WhatsApp groups, they have their own Soundcloud channel and also hand out pamphlets with lyrics for new fans to learn. The West Block in full flow is a spine-tingling sight. It’s a spectacle that is enhanced by the enormous banners unfurled in the stand. Banner culture is a fascinating aspect of Indian football, with new ones unveiled almost every match.

“That’s something that’s poignant and very very special to Indian football. I’ve not seen that in countries around the world,” said Paul Masefield, the former Birmingham City and Preston North End right back who works as a TV pundit for the Indian Super League. “I think that’s one really unique thing that ties fans to the club.”

The West Block Blues have a separate committee dedicated to creating matchday banners. “We brainstorm in our WhatsApp and Facebook groups and see what’s the sense amongst the fans and feel the pulse among the players – what is required, the situation of the league and what is needed,” said Ajit Kumar, a member of the West Block Blues’ banner making committee.

Unlike the chants, the banners are usually bereft of banter. Given that all banners are handmade and require weeks of work, Ajit spoke of how their efforts are better served motivating the team than riling the opposition.

A banner that stands out in Ajit’s memory is the one the West Block Blues made for the India national team when they played Guam in a World Cup qualifier at the Kanteerava in 2015. The 5200ft2 banner, among the biggest in Asia, read “The Road is Long but the Belief is Everything. Stand up for Indian Football”. Roared on by the electric crowd, India went on to beat Guam 1-0. It was the only game they won in the qualification round.

The qualifier was also the India and BFC goalkeeper Gurpreet Sandhu’s first game at the Kanteerava and it was a night he’d never forget. “I have that picture [of the banner] framed at home, and it will forever be a special moment for me, and for Indian football. This was before I joined Bengaluru FC and it is an experience I hold close to my heart. Since then, I’ve had many special moments with the fans after joining the club, but this was the first special one,” he said.

The Kanteerava stadium is the perfect concoction of fervour and fire. In the early years, the stadium atmosphere was used as a marketing tool to draw in new fans. One of the biggest roadblocks for the group in their efforts to expand the fanbase was the level of football on display. For the fans who were used to the high standards of European football, taking out time and money to watch an I-League game felt preposterous. Haridas remembers his conversations with such fans who refused to go for games because they ‘can’t watch paint dry’.

To tackle this issue, the fan group would pay for the ticket for such fans so that they could at least have a stadium experience before making their judgement. “I’m pretty sure most of these guys have never been to a Stamford Bridge or an Old Trafford. They don’t really have a stadium atmosphere in mind, so 100% [after going] to Kerala or Bangalore or Kolkata to watch a live game, your mindset completely changes,” Haridas said.

He added that a lot of these sceptics have now become regulars at the Kanteerava, with some even becoming core members of the West Block Blues. This has always been the group’s ultimate aim – to make fanatics out of fans.

The fans see themselves as the team’s 12th man. The West Block Blues’ banners and chants have inspired endless comebacks from impossible situations. There’s a reason it’s been dubbed the Fortress. “I recall a game we played in Bengaluru a couple of seasons ago when nothing was going our way, we were 2-0 down at half-time, and when we came out for the second half, they roared us onto the pitch and then chanted through the second half. We scored twice in that second half, and they’re the ones who assisted us,” said Sandhu, who joined BFC in 2017.

Chhetri has orchestrated numerous comebacks composed by the West Block choir but he recalls the second leg of the AFC Cup semi-final against JDT in 2016 as being the most explosive he’s seen the Kanteerava. Despite falling behind early in the first half, BFC clawed their way back to win 3-1 and created history by becoming the first team to make it to the AFC Cup final. Chhetri scored a phenomenal brace, including a 30-yard screamer that dipped into the top corner.

“The fans got us over the line that night, and just thinking about the atmosphere from that game still, five years on, gives me goosebumps,” he said.

The reverberations of their fandom have been felt across the country.

Marcus Mergulhão, sports editor of the Times of India, has been following Indian football, and Goan football in particular, for 25 years now. But the passion of BFC’s travelling support in their early visits to Goa was unlike anything he’d ever seen. “I can never forget that in a place like Goa that has so much history, so many great clubs, so many great performances, so many good players, a team from Bangalore, really an upstart, had more support in Goa than the local teams. I can say with surety because I’ve attended most of the games here,” he said.

“When we came in, the big clubs also started taking notice that, okay, this is how you marry the young ones into the football culture, ‘’ said Haridas. “We had a lot of women, college-going girls and boys, so it was a beautiful moment to see all the girls, boys singing together, dancing together in the stands. And that was the coming of age, because that wasn’t seen anywhere else in India.”

Gurpreet Sandhu too, is in awe of the club’s travelling support. “In Indian football, we travel to some parts of the country for our games that are very tough to access, sometimes we have to change two flights and then go up the mountains, but when we get there our fans are there too,” he said.

The passion extends beyond India; the West Block Blues have followed the team to places like the Maldives, Doha and Dushanbe. But Covid has been a roadblock for the fan group. In the last two seasons (including the current one) of the Indian Super League, the three-month marquee franchise tournament, has been held behind closed doors in a bubble in Goa. Bereft of their supporters, BFC have struggled.

In the three seasons preceding the ISL, BFC lost a combined three games at the Kanteerava. They went unbeaten at home on their way to the title in 2019. In the preceding season, they scored a staggering seven goals after the 90-minute mark. But last year, they finished a lowly 7th and failed to qualify for the ISL playoffs for the first time in their history.

“To watch the games on TV with the volume down is tough in itself, so you can only imagine what it is like to play in an empty stadium. Football without supporters in the stands is a really tough pill to swallow and especially for a club like BFC, where the supporters have played a massive part in many results over the years,” said Chhetri.

But, the lack of support isn’t only one factor behind BFC’s declining performances. The team is currently in transition and is in the process of replenishing its ageing squad under the new manager Marco Pezzaiuoli, who previously served as the technical director of Eintracht Frankfurt.

While the fans are itching to see their team in action again, they’ve found ways to make their support felt. “Even in the pandemic, when our games were held behind closed doors, sometimes there were fans who came to Goa just to see the team bus entering the stadium to show us that they are there for us. It’s amazing what our supporters do for this club and they play a massive part in the way we go about things,” said Sandhu.

There’s an electric synergy between the fanbase and the club. The two are so in sync that it’s tough to tell them apart. Since the beginning, Bengaluru FC has represented the West Block Blues and the West Block Blues have represented Bengaluru FC.

Shubi Arun is a writer based in Mumbai. He runs a weekly Substack newsletter on Indian sport called Pigeon Post and has written for publications like NatGeo, Vice and The Set Pieces. He writes about sport, culture and everything that lies at its intersection.