The Man, The Myth, The Legend; Source: The Hindu

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Indian football today, currently languishes at the bottom of the pile, ruined by years of neglect and lack of investment. World Cup qualification seems like a distant dream and even one of the most prolific scorers in world football, Sunil Chhetri, hasn't been able to help India save face. This wasn't always the case.

The 1950s are regarded as the "Golden Age of Indian Football" and that was primarily down to one man- Syed Abdul Rahim. A resident of Hyderabad, Rahim used to play football himself in his younger day for Osmania University.

> He even played for Dutch club HSV Hoek in the latter part of his career.

For a brief while before his appointment as the coach of the Indian team, he was a school teacher by profession. His heart, however, lay in football. in 1943, he was appointed the coach of the Hyderabad Police Team. 

Domestic competitions at that time were dominated by teams from Calcutta, where there was a rich footballing heritage. Under Rahim however, the Hyderabad Police Team emerged as one of the, if not the best teams within India.

> From 1950 to 1963, Hyderabad Police Team had a stacked trophy cabinet- 9 Roger Cups, 4 Durants Cups and 2 Santosh Trophies. This crop of players was one of the best Indian Football have ever seen.

Rahim's tenure as the Indian Coach began in 1949. There were a lot of glaring deficiencies in the team, one of the biggest being their tendency to dribble the ball for too long. Rahim knew if the team had to get somewhere, there were a lot of changes to be made. With his work cut out, he began weaving his magic.

To counter the problem, he introduced a drill where the players had to pass the ball after taking a single touch. If they didn't, a foul would be awarded to the other team. This allowed the team to improve their movement off the ball, get into empty spaces and progress the ball towards the other side of the field. 

> Other drills included practicing free-kicks of all sorts from all angles and playing with the other foot to become flexible enough to adapt to the situation.

Apart from working on the skills of his players, he placed greater emphasis on discipline and fitness, both of which went hand in hand. On the whiteboard, he was a tactician par excellence. He was the first person to introduce a 4-2-4 formation, which allowed forwards to drop back into the midfield and defenders to join the attack whenever necessary.

> This very formation was used by the legendary Brazilians at the 1958 World Cup.

Under Rahim, Indians won the 1951 Asian Games and reached the Semi-Finals of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics 5 years later- Indian Football's greatest ever achievement. India won the 1962 Asian Games as well, but this was a bittersweet victory, for it turned out to be Rahim's parting gift. 

Upon returning, he was diagnosed with Lung Cancer and the very next year, he succumbed to the vicious disease. During the last months of his life, he stressed finishing the work he had started, but this was perhaps one of his only failures. After his demise, Indian Football fell apart and ever since then, has longed to reach the summit of Football once again.

On this day in 1963, Indian Football suffered its worst-ever blow. The man who had helped the team scale heights never witnessed before, Syed Abdul Rahim, passed away and left a void that hasn't been filled to this day.