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Our Correspondent
Kohima, May 12 (EMN): Nagaland team on Thursday evening beat Goa team in the final match of the 6th Agape Cup 2022 -- National Christian Football Championship -- at Indira Gandhi Stadium (IGS) Kohima, hosted by GethemGo Nagaland and organised by Sports Coalition of India.
Dupisa opened the first account for Nagaland in the 31st minute and Mecievi helped the team with another goal in the 44th minute to secure the win for the host team. The lone goal for Goa was scored by Joshua.
Meanwhile, Tianuksung from Nagaland team was awarded with the highest scorer award for scoring six goals during the championship.
The three-day long football championship witnessed a total of 11 teams – Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Goa, Karnataka, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa and Kerala.
K Neibu Sekhose, president of Nagaland Football Association (NFA), who attended the closing ceremony as the guest of honour, congratulated the organisers and the teams for the successful event and stated that NFA will give its full support and cooperation if Unity World Cup 2024 is held in Nagaland.
He said football is the most popular sport in the world in terms of players and members, stating that according to FIFA, there are 265 million men and women that play football, 270 million referees, officials and 3.5 billion fans around the world.
The president asserted that football is the people’s game and a household name in the state and stated, “Athleticism and fitness are important but you don't need to be physically imposing to play football. Some of the world’s top players such as Pele, Maradona and Messi rely purely on skill and creativity rather than strength and stature”.
Further, he added that this makes football a more inclusive sport than other sports stating that there are no language barriers in this sport because everyone speaks in one language - football, which is played in 200 countries.
Sekhose advised that a game of football can teach so much about life and spirituality stating that ‘the football field represented the universe, while the period of the game is nothing but one's life, the rules of football are the limitations that one must contend within one’s journey to achieved the aim, the team-mates are the people who can help one reach the goal in life while the opponents are the obstacles that one has to overcome to reach that goal’.
He continued that the referee represents one's conscience, the ball is one’s soul and told the participants that the goalposts represent the lord almighty with whom one’s soul craves to connect and added that the goal a player scores is nothing but the salvation of one’s soul.