Every sports enthusiast loves an underdog. The feeling when an underdog defeats a champion can hardly be described as euphoria because somewhere deep down rooting for the underdog and seeing the impossible happen serves as pedigree to motivate ourselves.

But the ‘underdog’ story becomes even more special when it is football in consideration and specifically the league, where consistency of the team and all things football matter on the pitch week-in and week-out.

For a club representing less than 300,000 people from the state of Mizoram in India which finished 8th in Hero I-League season of 2015/16, the task of consistency week-in and week-out was dubbed to be herculean.

Fast forward seventeen league matches and Aizawl FC on the verge of clinching their first Hero I-League title has given the neutral hope, that sometimes even ordinaries can do the extra-ordinary.

In the process of a win away from their first Hero I-League title, Aizawl FC have fought the David versus Goliath seventeen times, being dubbed as the underdogs in almost every match and the club from the North East India has tasted defeat just thrice, against Mohun Bagan, JSW Bengaluru FC and Chennai City FC.

For the neutral football fan, the underdog optimist, stories of ordinary teams going on to etch their names in history carries with it a certain romance.

Although there is no taking away that football is after all a romantic game, tales such as Aizawl FC’s, Leicester City’s English Premier League win last season and even Chelsea’s UEFA Champions League win in 2012, entwines the neutral in a web of seduction making them fall in love with the game even more.

For a country like India, that seduction through Aizawl FC’s story has already caught the eyes of the football enthusiast in the country, and perhaps Aizawl FC’s title challenge has somewhere deep down, like Leicester City’s English Premier League win has planted a seed of inspiration – that nothing is impossible in life and especially in football.

“Irrespective of the final outcome, Aizawl FC have already won many hearts. According to me, they are the real winner”, said Lt. General (Retd.) Nirbhay Sharma, Governor of Mizoram.

“Aizawl FC, have started small and nurtured the local talents to come up, which is according to me the right way to go forward”, he added.

As former Aizawl FC player Joel Sunday had said after Aizawl FC’s win over JSW Bengaluru FC in the Hero Federation Cup 2015/16: “The Leicester story inspired us to go out and the field and play as it is our last day on Earth. Each and every player in the Aizawl FC squad took motivation from players in the Leicester City squad as the Leicester players became something from nothing and we wanted to show the World that we are something.”

What matters for 300,000 people from the city of Aizawl, for the State of Mizoram and perhaps for every football neutral in India is the hope for a ‘Leicester’ like fairytale ending.

(AIFF Media)