Maidaan

MAIDAAN is the story of an exemplary coach. The year is 1952. During the Olympics held in Helsinki, Finland, India horribly loses a match against Yugoslavia by 10-1. Roy Choudhry (Gajraj Rao), a prominent sports journalist and the editor of The Indian Reginald, slams the Indian football team. The Football…&nbspFederation of India, Kolkata, summons the team coach S A Rahim (Ajay Devgn), and asks for an explanation. Rahim reasons that the players didn’t even have proper shoes. He also insisted that he needs the freedom to choose players. The Federation head Anjan (Baharul Islam) agrees with Rahim but one of the core committee members, Shubhankar (Rudranil Ghosh), asks him to enlist more Bengali players. Rahim declines the request and insists that since it’s the Indian team, he’d get players from all over India based on merit. He then goes on a tour of the country to find the best footballers. He finally makes a fresh team, comprising Trilok Singh (Manandeep Singh), Arko Das (Prashanto Sinha), Jarnail Singh (Davinder Singh), Peter Thangraj (Tejas Ravishankar), Fortunato Franco (Madhur Mittal), Pradyut Burman (Tanmay Bhattacharjee), Arun Ghosh (Aaman Munshi), D Ethiraj (Raphael Jose), Tulsidas Balaram (Sushant Waydande), Chuni Goswami (Amartya Ray), Ram Bahadur (Amandeep Thakur), P K Banerjee (Chaitanya Sharma), Aryann Bhowmik (Neville Dsouza) and others. Rahim trains them well and in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the 1960 Rome Olympics, they put up an impressive game. But since they face a loss, the Federation yet again pulls up Rahim. On the other hand, Roy Choudhry, who has a personal grudge against Rahim, is spreading his agenda against him and the Indian team. If that’s not enough, Rahim faces a huge personal setback at this hour. What happens next forms the rest of the film.

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