Growing up in Manipur, I grew interested in football as a child. My father, who was a football player and runs a football association in my hometown Sekmai, always took me along to watch matches. I started liking the game and eventually ended up playing it.<\/p>\n
In 1989, I was selected for a training-cum-trial camp by the Sports Authority of India (SAI). Following that, I played in the under-12 national tournament representing Manipur and we reached the final against Bengal, which was held in Kolkata. After that tournament, Tata Football Association (TFA) selected me; I was then 11 years old.<\/p>\n
My World Cup memories go back to 1986 when my father took me to others\u2019 places as we did not have a television at home. In 1990, I watched the World Cup at TFA with other players.<\/p>\n
Since the beginning, I have supported England. I liked them from the days of their coach Bobby Robson. Though I know that they have least chance to win or even make a mark in the tournament, I support them from my heart. I like their style of playing. This year too I am supporting England but looking at their team, I hope they will play better this time.<\/p>\n
Every World Cup has its own set of memories for me. In the earlier days I liked Rom\u00e1rio (Rom\u00e1rio de Souza Faria). The one match I remember clearly is the 2010 quarter final match between Germany and Argentina. Germany won the match 4-0. That was a devastating moment for Argentina. But in 2014 they reached the finals. While Brazil also had a disastrous tournament in 2014, this time I hope they bounce back.<\/p>\n
It is hard to pick out any particular memory. Every World Cup is memorable for me.<\/p>\n
This year I will miss Italy. It is one team that always plays well and I look forward to their matches but this year they failed to qualify. Although I will miss them playing on the field, I hope to watch a few matches that compensates their absence.<\/p>\n
Mohamed Salah of Egypt is my favourite player. I do like Lionel Messi but when it comes to being good human being and contributing to the nation you come from, I feel that Salah has much more to offer than any other player these days. I also like Iniesta (Andr\u00e9s Iniesta Luj\u00e1n), his style of playing.<\/p>\n
I think Spain has a good chance of winning this year, apart from Brazil and Germany.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Renedy Singh talks about his favourite footballers and teams, World Cup memories from childhood and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":1365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1364"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=1364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}