By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net
Pune: Taha Memon, a 21-year old from Vadodara, Gujarat, has been nominated for Crayon d’Or competition. Taha is a 4th-year student of Bachelors in Liberal Arts at Symbiosis International University, Pune.
A Team of John O’Sheas, an online initiative which aspires to promote a higher standard of football journalism, runs the Crayon d’Or competition, which is being held for the second year. The award celebrates the lesser-known and marginalised voices within the football writing world.
“I have been writing since 6th standard. Initially, I used to write short stories and poems but later I switched over to writing articles as well,” Taha told TwoCircles.net.
Taha has been nominated for his article titled, “Bricklayer Who Built the Bastion – Bob Paisley’s Liverpool Legacy Through Anecdotes” published on footballparadise.com. In this piece, Taha writes about Bob Paisley, who joined Liverpool as a player in 1939 and had a role at the club till 1992. With over 50 years of service, perhaps no single person has served Liverpool better than him. During his tenure, Liverpool won three European Cups (1977, 1981 and 1984) and six English First Division titles. Paisley, along with Carlo Ancelotti of Italy and Zinedine Zidane of France are the only managers to have won the European Cup (now called the Champions League) three times. Apart from his first season, Liverpool won a trophy in each of his nine managerial years.
“Bill Shankly may have laid the foundations, but it was Bob Paisley who built the house. A man of the like the world may never see again. British football’s original reluctant genius, the bricklayer,” writes Taha in his piece.
“Liverpool has been my all-time favourite club and I was quite interested to read about Bob Paisley who was once its manager. I bought few books on him, read few articles and formed my opinion on him and write the piece,” he told TwoCircles.net.
In 2017, the competition was won by Priya Ramesh who has since gone on to become a regular on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast and now appears in a variety of mainstream outlets.
According to A Team of John O’Sheas, Crayon d’Or Competition is all about the celebration of football writing and expects nominations to come from all and without the narrow grouping of particularly white middle-class males who dominate the field of football writing.
“The world of football writing needs to diversify or we will die the death of banality in the name of protecting the already powerful,” reads the organization website.
The nominees have been put on Twitter for voting. If you want to vote for Taha Memon, you can click here.