It's time for India

Leo Messi played in Kolkata last evening. He's the greatest footballer around today: his prolific scoring in Europe, his assists to set up even more goals and his total dominance in midfield and up puts paid to any doubt.

There's even less doubt that Kolkata, the city that birthed India's oldest football club, Mohun Bagan AC in 1889, was the right place for the diety to have descended.

Though the three major resident clubs, Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting can no longer claim to be among Asia's better ones, nobody dreams football better than the Bong.

Sure, there are teams from Goa that can outplay Bengal's storied teams, but where among Goa's swaying palms would you find a crowd to fill a stadium with 100,000 screaming fans?

These attractions brought Pele, the greatest player of his generation, to Kolkata in 1977. It was the twilight of his career, the last year he played with the New York Cosmos.

That match was a damp squib, played in rain, against a combined Bagan- Bengal team that spent all its ammunition in the first 10 minutes and allowed the visitors to, absentmindedly, score a couple of goals. Maradona probably the greatest player of all time, also came to Kolkata in 2008, long after his playing years were over.

But Messi's arrival is special because he came at the peak of his career, with an all-star national team to play a full-force Venezuela. Though the latter is south America's lowest-ranked team, having never qualified for the World Cup, the match was played at a level never seen on Indian soil.

Messi's arrival was foretold in the rise of a young, maturing India whose attractions are tough to resist for all nations. Football is a poor cousin of cricket in this country, but it's the world's most-played and watched game. Finally, in the world of football, it's time for India.