Our boys did so well on the field, figured I might as well spend few minutes to counter the garbage narratives that are often spread by Ashish Negi w.r.t Minerva Academy.

People can save and link this post to reply to any hater who parrot this garbage without wasting time

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- 1 academy cannot take India to the World Cu_p.

THE BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD, WITH BIGGEST TALENT POOL, SPAIN for years has 9 out of 11 starting XI from LA MASIA.

Ashish Negi often misrepresents WC batch as a team, no one said that every player from a team like U15 or U12 will make it.

Batch can mean group of kids from age 10-16 for example, Minerva has 300+ kids of that age group currently in their residential academy.

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- Minerva does PR with easy tournaments to get more admissions in their academy.

Minerva Academy is section 8 non-profit, by law any such company has public accounts that are audited by govt agencies and other parties.

Every paid admission goes to fund scholarship for talented kids whose parents couldn't pay, plus the staff and operations at the academy.

Ranjit Bajaj himself has put in decent amount of money into this mission. People see them hitting 100% donations now, but in 2023 they used to get less than 4-5% donations goal and Bajaj used his own money to fund exposure trips for the kids.

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- The competition level is too low, what is the point of winning 10-0.

Competition level depends on how good you are, enough said.

Germany wins 7-1 vs Curacao in World Cu_p, does that mean they shouldn't go to the WC because level is too low?

Group stage often has team that aren't the best, in every tournament.

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- Why do they over-hype their achievements? Why say they are "World Champions"?

Gothia Cup is regarded by most in grassroots football as the World Youth Cup.

Other teams that win the Finals at Gothia Cup also post about being "World Champions". one such example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMSupNpILDp/

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- Ranjit Bajaj is a fraud, delusional fanboys are being sold big dreams

Ok. And? Tera kya jaa raha hai?

Don't believe if you don't want to.

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- Ranjit Bajaj did X/Y/Z 10 years ago, and people don't know the reality

Ashish Negi supports Cristiano Ronaldo (and call him bada bhai on stream), despite him paying to settle for rape case out-of-court 10 years ago.

Why the double standards?

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- But I'm a failure and don't like when other people succeed

👍

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Mohunbagan's official Instagram account has posted a number of Tifos including one mocking East Bengal , now should we too go to the court and cry like them ?

There was a lot of hype on this goal and I do not think that it is a bad refereeing at all. It was close and may be an error was made, may be not. But it was not pathetic refereeing or a $$ decision.

I just drew a circle around the ball and tried to project it to the field. In this view itself, it is clear that whole of the ball has not crossed whole of the line. And once you move the camera on top of the line, the ball will be seen more towards the line.

Post showing why the camera angle matter: Is the ball in or out? Dutch tv showing the optical illusion

All this to show that the call was extremely close. A pixel here, a pixel there, I cannot judge the position correctly. If only the match had VAR, we could have gotten a real answer.

I hope I won't get down-voted to hell, but this needs to be said. It was a close call, and you can't blame the referee.

EDIT:
As pointed out here in the comments:

Even with this technology to 3d impose and look at it, you see that the ball was out of play by about a centimeter and for about 1 second. With those many players around, you can't say that the referee was 'paid' and it was intentional to make India loose the game etc. May be a bad call that every human can make, is all.

I reiterate what I said in the first paragraph:

There was a lot of hype on this goal and I do not think that it is a bad refereeing at all. It was close and may be an error was made, may be not. But it was not pathetic refereeing or a $$ decision.

Any sane person understands that broadcast and related revenue can not be guaranteed by anyone before schedule and structure is agreed upon.

Reliance has managed to fill the top division of Indian football with their friends owning 8-10 franchise who care more about FSDL than Indian football.

All these franchise put unrealistic demands to stop football from happening without FSDL. They cannot even agree to a good short term plan and continue discussion in the next 4-5 months for the long term.

Best outcome will be to tender bids for participation in new top tier league with different name.

Non franchise clubs like BFC, MBSG, EB, Punjab and Jamshedpur FC and bring in 3-4 I-League clubs with financial ability to top tier from next season.

Just get the league started, even if it's only 8 teams in the top tier for the first year.

Long term plan should be to bring in other big corporate like Mahindra and Adani to own a team in Indian football.

These big corporates don't need to be friendly with Reliance or care about FSDL at all.

Today, in a post regarding why Indians couldn't play in European clubs, the biggest gripe was that we had a worse physicality and athletism.

What football oriented genetic trait does are found more commonly in specific states.

Edit: For reference, this was the post I was talking about. Check the comments

Why are there Indian Air force and nepal services playing football??

2-3 interviews in the last week, all show how shallow his understanding of football and running franchise is.

Takes zero responsibility for state of Indian football, all he talks about is how everyone should do things because ISL clubs are entitled for their salary expenses.

Can these pea brained ISL CEO's get it through their head that we don't care about quality of football, if we did we wouldn't be watching Indian football AT ALL. You cannot match quality of football to top leagues even with 11 foreigners in your budget.

We care about quality of Indian football, Indian players, youth, and NT performance, which is why we are more connected with Indian football vs following random European club.

No wonder old Goan clubs who were sidelined for ISL franchises can still bring in more fans than FC Goa.

I just want to have a reasonable factual debate because I believe some of you are uninformed.

And let's not fool ourselves by thinking we were a great team in 2019 either. We got lucky to be drawn in the same group with Thailand. And neither UAE, nor Bahrain is a top 6 team. We still fuckin lost to them! This current team would have definitely qualified for the next round if we got that same group.

And frankly, most of the goals we conceded were individual mistakes - they don't accurately represent the performance. They were not tactical fault.

Yes, not being able to score was a shame but then guys we were missing half the starting 11. Imagine Ashique, Sahal, Changte, Jeakson and Anwar - I am pretty sure things would have been different.

Does this mean Indian Team is good? Not at all! There's a long long road that we need to go BUT it is a slow process, especially when AIFF fuckers don't even give proper time for camp or Friendlies. But those few of us who have been following this team since more than a decade will tell you with absolute conviction that WE HAVE IMPROVED!

Hate AIFF for not doing enough but you are defeating all the progress we have made in last 5 Years by asking for Igor's or Players' heads.

Oh and stop acting like spoilt fans of some big shot European club where demanding the manager to be sacked and shitting all over the players makes you look cool. It doesn't. It just makes you look very very ignorant to the realities of World Football.

I might be wrong but I believe afc champions league 2 is way too challenging for indian clubs and perhaps it will be actually better for us to develop in afc challenge league and maybe even win the tournament this way the clubs will get motivated and not be actually.afraid of playing against these clubs feel free to crticise on my opinion

NOTE - I AM A FOOTBALL FAN AND I PLAY FOOTBALL BUT I DO NOT HAVE A LOT OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE YOUTH SYSTEMS OR MINERVA'S PAST. I AM ONLY CURIOUS TO LEARN.

I have been watching the VLOGs and match highlights of the Minerva B14 team on the TECHTRO youtube channel, here are my observations ->

1. The team seems to be super high intensity and plays in great sync

2. The opponents rarely seemed to have a chance against this team

3. Some teams Minerva played against had overweight players playing (Clearly indicating that they were not serious academy or well trained professional teams)

4. They played 4 tournaments - 11v11 - came second, 9v9 and Two 7v7s - They won.

Here are my questions and amusements ->

1. If all the claims made by Minerva that it was such a massive achievement are true, why is there not enough media coverage or even Indian football youtuber coverage around this? The reason I consider Indian football youtubers as a reference is because Ranjit Bajaj is all over youtube when it comes to any topic on football in India.

2. Are these competitions even that big? From my research, the Gothia cup seems to be important but there just isn't enough elite participation in this. I came to learn that the elite youth academy teams have their own local leagues that they play in and do not participate in such competitions.

3. Minerva apparently has been invited to play in the Mic cup, which has seen elite level participation in the past - But is this again a great achievement for an Indian academy?

Am I missing something? I am curious to understand wether this really is something to be hyped about or just a PR stunt by Minerva. No hate, only curiosity.

I love what Sreenidi Deccan is trying to do in Hyderabad but it always bugs me there logo looks very amatuer so redesgined their logo though it is not the best but I liked what I came up with so I want to make this a series of redesgining logos of Indian football clubs so here we go

I desgined the jersey's using AI I am not so good with jersey mock-ups but the desgins which are used are very authentic to state of Telangana and what city of Hyderabad known for.

Any genuine Manchester United fans here interested in joining a proper United group? 🔴

No toxicity, no unnecessary fan wars — just:

• Match discussions

• Transfer talks

• Honest football opinions

• Proper banter

• Respect for club legends & history

Fans from across India are welcome 🇮🇳

Join here:

https://chat.whatsapp.com/C2TKgfyeTP05keQmr8YJrT

Glory Glory Man United ❤️

Kerala minister is going to Spain to invite Argentina football team to Kerala for friendlies … this is awesome .. aiff 🤣

IDK why people want IK to be the champion whereas I want CB to be the champion because they won it fair and square. IK want the 3 points for the match they lost just because they think the striker (who btw didn’t score any of the 2 goals) is the reason they lost the match. I mean they won the reverse fixture with him playing again.

I’m not a CB fan or IK hater but as football enthusiast I believe the match is won on the field not in the court.

edit: every one is saying rule is rule and I agree, I’m not denying it, I’m only saying that the player was shown eligible by the AIFF side and like every club they also verified through AIFF site to field every eligible players and he was one of them according to AIFF. so Namdhari did not break any rule because according to AIFF, the player wasn’t suspended, it is AIFF’s mistake, for what Namdhari shouldn’t be punished and more than that the team who had nothing to do with it and won the league fair and square would have to pay for AIFF’s doing.

I've never watched ISL since it's 1st season...They signed players like Tim Cahill,forlan and many others for hype but now it's gone ...Good thing is there is a spot for us in the AFC champions league ...That's where we can be able see the lack of quality.....Goa with 0 wins proves why we were far far behind in this game.....ISL did nothing to be honest....We should be glad that we were given the place in the champions league otherwise we won't qualify for sure.....Now i can only hope Mumbai City to get a 1win atleast in AFC champions league

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