 Every year, millions of tourists visit India. They come here to gaze at what has been called the most beautiful monument in the world, to immerse themselves in the sights and sounds, to shop for beautiful arts and crafts, to find themselves and also to play football. While India sees its fair share of religious tourists of every description, for some, the quest leads to the most secular of churches, a football stadium. And more often than not, these pilgrims have made the journey from the cradle of humanity, Africa. I teach football, I coach football, I play football. Football means everything to me, it's my life. It's not just a game, it's more than a game, I can do anything with football. It's life for me. We always passionate when we are playing. When you love something, you can die for it. Football is all I got. I achieve all I have through football. My life is about football. Football is a religion. Footballers from Africa have always been sought after by top clubs and leagues the world over. And since the institution of the Biennial Africa Cup of Nations in 1957, the popularity and reach of the sport have skyrocketed all over the continent. Professional footballers from countries like Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa and many others have attained international stardom and can command hefty salaries wherever they go. A recent news report estimated that approximately 400 footballers from Africa are currently playing professional football in India. Though they may hold any one of the 54 different passports that the African continent currently provides, they speak one language, football. The greatest thing of football is its simplicity. You know, from a seven-year-old child to a football expert like me, everybody can understand the game. For over a hundred years, every other game has changed the format. Now Hockey is having some two points for a goal, Cricket has three different formats. Every sport has changed its format. Football is still the same. As it was in 1901, it's in 2015, I have to put the ball in the goal or I save the ball. That's all. And it's the only game played with the feet. It's the poor man's revenge. There is very little doubt that football is the most popular sport in the world. Africans play in professional football leagues all over India, from state tournaments like the Kerala Premier League to the national football competition as the eye-lead to the big-money Indian Super League. But though football has been played in India for well over a hundred years, African players were first seen only a few decades ago. A Chennai-based Nigerian student by the name of David Williams is considered to have been the first contracted African footballer in India, playing for Tamil Nadu and East Bengal. So why did it take nearly a century for African footballers to make their first appearance in Indian football? And how did the next four decades see them become the dominant site in the game? African footballers were spotted by club officials when they came to India to study. Subsequently, club officials started sending their key officials abroad to various parts of Africa, and they started spotting raw talents and bringing them on the board of Indian football. Though the world knows India is a cricket-mad nation, football has always had a devoted following, particularly in places like Goa, Kerala, the Northeast and Kolkata. The game has been played in India since the late 19th century and was introduced to the country by British soldiers and school masters. Though Indian football was initially a solely British preserve, the locals would eventually get in on the action. On the 15th of August 1889, the first truly Indian football club came into being Mohan Bagan. You see, when the British started, I would put it this way. To control the youth of this country, they had trained them in two games. One was cricket and one was football. In the early days of Indian football, teams comprised of serving British soldiers dominated the landscape, but that would soon change. None of the Indian teams were allowed to play in the IFA shield. The thing was broken in 1909 when Mohan Bagan and another team were allowed to play in the IFA shield. And two years later, they created history in 1911 in the final. The foreign team based here called East Yorkshire Regiment to win the IFA shield and that created a big impetus among the Indian youths. As the years passed, dozens of football clubs began to spring up in India and the sport flourished. After India gained independence from the British in 1947, the sport grew even stronger, leading to a period of Asian dominance in the 1950s. A string of successes followed, most notably a gold medal at the first ever Asian Games held in New Delhi in 1951. Also notable was a fourth place finish at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. But the decades that followed were to see Indian football slide from Asian dominance to global oblivion, a team that had once ruled the Asian continent would find itself on a downward spiral. I think is Indian football's biggest problem. You see for a country of 1.2 billion, we still only essentially have three football clubs which are supporters and all three of them are from Kolkata and that's not how football should exist. Indian football has traditionally relied on skill-based play, but in the international arena, power is equally important, if not more so. And that's where Indian footballers would consistently find themselves outmatched, especially by their European counterparts. But in 1991, a Nigerian player who'd been studying architecture in Vishakhapatnam was able to bring the power of Africa to Indian football. Mohan Baganesi, India's oldest football club, broke with a century of tradition and recruited the first foreigner in their history, Chima Okori. The Nigerian striker would live up to his star-bellied and hard. What Chima did was to bring in power into Indian football through hard training, through repetition, through hard work. So Chima set the trend. You know, this big-bodied, able-bodied striker who became a legend. Okori captured the imagination of India's football fans and in the process opened the floodgates for an array of footballers from the African continent. Suddenly, every team in India wanted an African player for its very own. The clubs realized that this is a treasure trove waiting to be tapped because African students do come over to study here and they have been coming over forever. But none of them were really professional football players. It is only in the past five, six years that you're now getting professional African football players. Players from Africa or people from Africa, they are groomed for music, dance and football. And they have seen India as a potential market. So you have any small club, big clubs, they have people, the trademark is a guy from Africa. And what we have seen also in the past that they have fantastic motivators. They've got the skill, they've got the seal. The Nigerian economy at that time was not very strong because you know, the club structure wasn't very good. So many of these players would have fallen by the wayside. They wouldn't have risen to certain amount of football stardom. Chima and Amika, primarily because they came to India, became football stars and Amika played the ultimate football world cup for Nigeria. So that is all because of India. It may have taken a while for African footballers to become a regular fixture in India. But they are now here to stay quite literally in some cases. I came to India when I was like 17, 18 years. I am a coach now. I work with a Goa Football Development Council, GFDC. Tony Okafor isn't the only African footballer to have settled down in India. Many other Africans have chosen to put down roots in India. The languid rhythms of Goa seem to hold a particular charm. Clifford Chukwuma is a former Nigerian footballer who used to coach Sporting Goa in the erstwhile national football league. Clifford is now the head coach of the CESA Football Academy in Goa and has been settled in the area for many years. Both his sons were educated in Goa and considered themselves Indian. My senior son was here with us also and then he graduated to the senior team and then he went for trials in Europe and he made it. Right now he is in Europe. So this is the second one. Fortunately they said they are not interested in studying. They want to be professional football players. So I had to encourage them. From the beaches and laid-back vibe that India's small estate has to offer, Goa boasts of a passionate and built-in fan base for football and footballers. But there's passion and then there's passion. When I play for Moabagan in 2002, I think when we are in Chennai, we play Federation Cup final. I scored fantastic goals. When we are coming back to Kolkata, wow, at the airport, it took us five hours from the airport to reach Maidan because of the fans, you know, no space, nothing. You know, just inside the bars, drumming, you know, all sorts of things. Kolkata, the erstwhile capital of British India, city of joy, city of Teresa and city of football. Kolkata is home to two of the most storied football clubs in India, Mohan Bagan and East Bengal, as well as Atletico de Kolkata, champion of the first edition of the Indian Super League. The 2011 census of India pegged Kolkata's population at approximately 4.5 million and it's a safe bet that the majority of that population is football man. This is Odafa Okoli from Nigeria. Odafa plays for the sporting club de Goa in the National I League and is the highest paid footballer in India, pocketing 30 million rupees for his skills as a striker. In the past, he's played for teams like Churchill Brothers and Mohan Bagan. Though Odafa plays for a Goan team, he hasn't forgotten the adulation he received in Kolkata. Kolkata, they're crazy about football. When I'm Kolkata, I play for three years. I cannot walk in street, it's difficult for me. They're making me like a hill or a king. You know, some people watching me, touching my leg, I don't understand that. Touching leg, doing like this, I don't know. In Kolkata, they're so crazy about me. Odafa Okoli or Ranty Martins is considered as one of the real debbie gods of Indian football today. Ranty scored over 200 goals in I League and he's been followed by all his penguins, like what the Spanish footballers are doing to Messi. They look to Ranty in the same way. Brigade parade ground, at least that's the official name. But every Kolkata knows it simply as Maidan or Open Field. It's an area surrounded by temples of sport, from eating gardens, India's largest cricket stadium, to the Kolkata race course, to the grounds of the big three of Indian football, Mohan Bagan, East Bengal and Muhammadan sporting. But while the stars practice inside their dedicated football arenas, the general public indulges in its favourite pastime, right here on the Maidan. Here, names like Odafa and Dudu have the same talismanic power as Dhoni or Kohli. It is for hardcore fans like these that the players sweat it out night and day to produce the best football they possibly can. This is East Bengal's training ground in Kolkata. The players are busy training for their upcoming match against their arch-rival's Mohan Bagan. They're being put through their paces by an African, Sammy Omolu. Sammy is a former international for his native Kenya, but he too has had a long association with Indian football. He's played for both Mohan Bagan and East Bengal in his younger days and is now assistant coach of East Bengal. Sammy makes his wards train hard in the humid Kolkata weather. To stand them in good stead, come match time. This is something that I am really cherishing and then of course I play here, I know the mentality and then bring something new, bringing things that in terms of training also you bring something new. The African player will bring the energy in it then the Indian player will bring the flair. Most of the Indian players are very good with the ball. So with this combination I think we make a very strong team. Then of course the strength also. I think African players have more strength than maybe Asian players. So with this you mix it with the Asian players then I think you just make a wonderful team. You know playing away from your country, playing away from your family it gives you that commitment in anything you're doing. That push combined with the familiar climate means that African players have found it easier to adapt to Indian conditions than footballers from Europe. Playing at the peak of an Indian summer or training hard under an unforgettable African. Jude Joseph Siddi is from the Siddi community of India. A scattered ethnic group of individuals descended from the Bantu people of Southeast Africa brought to the Indian subcontinent as slaves by the Portuguese. Formerly national goalkeeper for the Indian team Jude was born in Halyal, a small town in Karnataka. Jude speaks six languages and is especially fond of one phrase. Like in Canada I would say like football is played. In Tamil, it is played well. In Konkani, it is played well. In Hindi, it feels good to play football. In English, I love football. From sandy beaches to dreamy hill stations the world's favourite game is played all over India but passions reach fever pitch when the compass needle begins to shift towards the northeast. North-east India is a riot of colour. The flora is rich, the fauna is diverse and the people are cheerful. The eight states that make up the north-eastern part of India have always been football man. It is here that independent India's first football captain was born. Nagaland's Thali Miran Aav gained fame as captain of Mohan Bagan and later went on to skipper India for the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. Many years later, Sikkim's Bhai Chung Bhutia would go on to become India's most capped player. The north-east's deep love for football has meant that numerous local tournaments have proliferated. African players get an excellent opportunity to ply their trade and the shared love for the beautiful game brings together two very diverse yet similar cultures. India's capital New Delhi is the seat of India's government home to dozens of historical monuments and the 12th largest metro system in the world. Nearly 40 million travellers pass through the city's airport including this man. A devout Christian, Bucci Jod came to India from Nigeria to play professional football. Though he hasn't yet been contracted by a major Indian team he has been signed on by some educational institutions to help coach their wards. Like for him, for dozens of other African nationals India means an assured income and the opportunity to play football in front of an impassioned crowd. And their professionalism and athleticism make it a smart move for top sports clubs to avail of their services. The launch of the Indian Super League or ISL in 2014 has created a fresh demand for quality players from overseas. And by and large, scouts and owners tend to look to the African continent. From September to December, players from all over Africa are seen in action in the ISL including Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. The African players are flair. You see them, you look at them, they're flair, they're fast, they're attacking. A certain amount of things which really set them aside. And so I think, you know, that's the... So it's great to have them around. So, you know, not that we have two players this year, Richard Gadze from who's a part of the Ghana national team and Malouda is of African origin. But, you know, we've been trying, we'd love to have more African players as we go along. I think it's a, you know, it's a great cultural fit. So if you see any African attacking and you're saying, hey, you know, you're naturally thinking something will happen, there's something with them around, they'll be not a dull moment as they say. And that's what makes them exciting. Ultimately, the African visitors from overseas have made and dared their own. Once they've put on their football jerseys, religions and passports cease to have any meaning. Player is like a family. We eat together, we drink together, we do everything together. You can't even know maybe we are from other country. Though there may sometimes be a gulf between the skill levels of the locals and the expats, the meeting of the two is proving to be mutually beneficial. They've had a major impact in gold scoring, the way they train, the chimas to run on the beaches in, you know, the sand in Calcutta, near the river, Hougli river. So, you know, Indian players have also learned that keeping fit, the type of food. So, no, no, they've had a lot of positive impact also in that. And also Indian defenders have learned how to cope with, you know, somebody who's stronger and taller than you. So, you don't get overawed by them. Africa's most famous export is its football players. Okay, now, so you see football in Europe, you see African players all over. Now, you see food like the Brazilians they've spread out across the world. What has happened in India also, depending on the budgets that you can provide, you've got African players. Over the years, Africans and Indians have mixed, mingled and melded. They've played against each other, with each other, cheered on each other, shared pressing rooms, and in some cases, gone on to share lives. A shared history of colonial oppression has perhaps contributed to the easy kinship now in evidence in Indian football. As the years go by, the bond between these two worlds will only grow stronger as they march together towards that one goal of universal product.