The hilarious exchange between the man on Manchester United’s big comeback victory over Manchester City in EPL in Malayalam to the newspaper reporter is now being widely shared online. (Source: AP) The hilarious exchange between the man on Manchester United’s big comeback victory over Manchester City in EPL in Malayalam to the newspaper reporter is now being widely shared online. (Source: AP)

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that football runs in Kerala’s veins. The popularity of the local team Kerala Blasters, the record-breaking attendance at ISL games in Kochi and the feverish excitement with which Malayalis welcome the World Cup are a testament to how much the state loves football. In fact, some of the fiercest supporters of English Premier League (EPL) teams – such as Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool – in the country can be found concentrated in Malabar, a small region sandwiched between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats in the state’s north.

Last week, a young man’s heartfelt complaint about a local paper’s coverage of Manchester United over a phone call to the paper’s office has now gone viral on WhatsApp. Malayalam newspapers are known to dedicate two-three pages for sports, out of which a single page is often set aside for big football tournaments such as EPL and the Champions League. But Mohd Rashid, a native of Kannur, was terribly disappointed when he couldn’t see even a small report in a local paper on Manchester United’s big comeback victory over Manchester City in the EPL on April 7.

In a phone call to a journalist managing the paper’s sports pages, Rashid’s warm and humble complaint about the paper’s treatment of his favourite team has been spreading smiles across social media platforms. The journalist tried to reason with him that the report couldn’t have been carried because the match ended late into the night on Saturday. But Rashid wasn’t satisfied. He kept insisting, in a very humorous manner, how he believed the paper was biased against ManU even as it promoted other teams like Barcelona and PSG. The entire conversation was in Malayalam.

Listen to it here.

“I checked Sunday’s paper for the report but it was not there. And then I thought since the match ended late Saturday, you would have needed more time to write. So I woke up early on Monday morning wanting to read about the match in your paper and I couldn’t find anything. You didn’t even write two lines. The other day, Messi scored a hattrick and you filled half the page. Neymar scores goals and you give so much space, are they giving you money, I want to know,” Rashid tells the journalist in such earnestness, that laughter has been a common reaction.

“When Manchester Utd loses, you use big headlines and all that, but when United wins, you don’t give any space. You know, how much that makes us sad?…you must be thinking I am mad to call to tell you about this. But I have lost my patience. We don’t want to know about road accidents and all, I want to read about United winning. You keep covering the IPL but its all match-fixing you know that…United is a decent team and we don’t have any ego,” he says.

The journalist finally assured him that the paper would keep note of the criticism and give appropriate coverage to United. And true to his word, Rashid on Tuesday, three days after the match, woke up with a smile to a big story on United’s victory over City.

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