Vijay Barse, the man who started Slum Soccer in India is being portrayed by Amitabh Bachchan in the upcoming movie Jhund. The movie shows the life of the football coach from Nagpur who decided to use the sport as a means of empowering the slum children into star footballers.

Vijay Barse had also appeared in an episode of Satyameva Jayate hosted by Aamir Khan, where he shared his experience of the early 2000s. He used to work as a sports teacher at NaNagpur’s Hislop Colleg back then, where he spotted some kids kicking around a broken bucket in the rain, followed with which he offered them a football, which they went on to accept happily. He also shared on the TEDx talk that soon later, he had spotted another group of kids who were kicking around a tennis ball.

Soon later, he went on to get these kids in the playground together and realised that as long as the kids were in the ground, they were away from all the ills of the world. Seeing this, he thought that this would help contribute to building the nation’s future. On Satyameva Jayate, he said that he had realised that as long as the kids were playing on the field, they were away from bad habits.

This led to the beginning of Zopadpatti Football in 2002, which eventually went on to become famous for Slum Soccer. On being asked by his colleague on why he named the league Zopadpatti Football, Vijay shared in his TEDx talk that all players actually lived in zopadpatti/slums, and considering that he had to work for them, he decided to continue with that name.

As the league grew, matches were now being played on the district levels and city level. In 2003, Vijay came into the limelight after an article was published in Dainik Bhaskar, after which his work was known to the larger audience. Initially, Vijay had no sponsors to fund his endeavour but when his son who lived in the US read the article in the American newspaper, he came back to India to his father.

In a chat with The Indian Express in 2018, Vijay Barse shared that he was a sports teacher where he was not actually promoting the development of football but was promoting development through football.

The movie Jhund is releasing in theatres on March 4.