As the sun sets over Mumbai’s iconic Oval Maidan, Rajesh Rathod slips into his football shirt and boots, ready for an evening game.But he has to wait. “We can play, but only after cricket finishes,” the 21-year-old, who trains there regularly, said. “Cricket practice ends at 6 pm on weekdays, so we can start only after that. But on weekends, it’s all cricket.”A few kilometres away, children run through the drills on a floodlit artificial turf. They are part of a private academy that rents the ground to train young players. In most parts of the city, facilities like these charge upwards of Rs 1,000 per hour.If football is all about space, Mumbai’s players are finding it tough to find. The public grounds are either out of bounds or taken over by cricket. The private facilities are so costly that aspiring footballers are often priced out.Henry Picardo, an executive committee member of the Mumbai Football Association and a former India international, said that the city’s football ecosystem risks becoming too dependent on private turf culture if public spaces continue to shrink. “Grassroots football is so important to develop a love for the game,” Picardo said. “Unfortunately, there is a bit of a turf culture in Mumbai, we are trying to build a culture of gully football, similar to gully cricket.”Must Read | Mumbai is getting its fifth cricket stadium. Chirag Shetty, World No. 1, has no arena to call homeBut it hasn’t been easy. Marcellus John Aleckan, an AIFF D-License coach at Cooperage ground in Churchgate, said Mumbai’s problem is no longer getting children interested in football. The challenge, he pointed out, is accessibility.“We are only targeting people who can afford to pay money to play on these turfs. But what about people who can’t afford it, who come from an underprivileged background?” he said.Story continues below this adIndia Rush Soccer Club director George Lawrance said Mumbai’s football problem is not a lack of sporting space, but how inaccessible much of it has become for grassroots football. “Mumbai actually has a significant amount of open and private sporting space, but the real challenge is accessibility, regulation, and long-term sporting vision,” he said. “Many spaces are either unavailable due to permissions and scheduling priorities, commercially inaccessible, or simply not designed and managed properly for structured football development.”Lawrence added while artificial turfs had helped increase participation in football across the city, they had also contributed to rising costs at the grassroots level. “The financial burden falls heavily on parents, along with a handful of committed clubs and sponsors who continue supporting football more through passion and philanthropy than commercial returns,” he said. “This creates a serious risk of football becoming increasingly ‘pay-to-play’, where talented children from lower-income backgrounds struggle to sustain long-term participation despite having the ability and passion.”Also Read | Breaking: Navi Mumbai to get 1,00,000-seater world-class cricket stadiumThat divide is most visible in Mumbai’s underprivileged neighbourhoods, where grassroots organisations pointed out that the shrinking public space and poor maintenance are making football increasingly inaccessible.“Football used to be accessible to everyone, but it is rapidly changing,” said Ashok Rathod, who grew up in the Ambedkar Nagar slum. He started the Oscar Foundation after seeing children around him drift towards drugs and crime, with few safe spaces available to them.Story continues below this ad“There used to be lots of free public places to play,” he said, pointing to grounds like the Annabhau Sathe Maidan in Goregaon where children used to play freely before it was given over to a private organization. Today, Rathod said, many children coached by the organisation practiced on roads and cramped lanes in areas like Goregaon, because accessible grounds are either unavailable or unaffordable.Several public grounds like Azad Maidan, Shivaji Park, and Oval Maidan are dominated by cricket, while private turfs spread across the city demand hefty hourly fees. “There is such a lack of space for the children we help from the slum areas; turfs are expensive, without NGOs like us, these kids can’t play,” he said.Participation in organised football, he added, often comes with costs many families cannot afford.Shankar Menon, the communications manager for the Oscar Foundation estimated that the organisation spends roughly ₹4,000 a week on turf bookings for a single batch of children. With nearly 180 batches, each consisting of around 30 children, operating across its programmes, Menon said the costs of securing safe training spaces run into lakhs of rupees every month.Story continues below this adIn Govandi, grassroots organisations say neglected public grounds have also created safety concerns for children training there.Anoop Parik, co-founder of The Next Page Community Foundation, which trains nearly 300 children through football programmes, said children are often forced to practice alongside unsafe activity around public grounds.“We use multiple BMC grounds such as the Kutbe Koran Play Ground, and Shri Ram Mandir Garden, located in Govandi to train our kids, and we’re always competing for space with cricket players and people doing drugs on the side,” he said. “Another issue is the quality of the surface; these grounds are littered with stones and glass shards.”Letters shared with The Indian Express by the organisation show repeated complaints to the BMC’s Gardens Department about conditions at the grounds used by children in Govandi. One letter alleged that the grounds had “become a hub for drug addicts and anti-social elements” and warned that the absence of lighting and security had made the area unsafe for children.Story continues below this adAnother letter alleged that motorcycles regularly entered the ground and that “youngsters use the ground for illegal and antisocial activities, using it as a space for alcohol and drug consumption.”Municipal officials acknowledged complaints regarding conditions at some public football grounds, while maintaining that steps had been taken to address the issues.Sharad Bagul, BMC’s Assistant Superintendent of the Gardens Cell, M-East ward, said he was not the presiding officer when the letters regarding the grounds were originally sent to the BMC.“Currently, the bikes are not allowed to drive on the ground,” he said, adding that civic authorities had also been coordinating with local police regarding complaints of alleged drug activity near the football grounds. “We have been in communication with the police regarding the drug use,” Bagul said.Story continues below this adAvinash Yadav, of the BMC Garden Cell, G-south ward, said football continues to compete with cricket and other sports for access to public grounds. “While it is cricket-dominated, anyone can come and play football on these public grounds; they just will have to cooperate with the cricket players,” he said. “It is hard to make grounds in the G-south ward specifically for football due to the space required,” Yadav added.But Mazher Ramzanali, founder and managing partner of the Homegrown Grasshoppers Sports Academy, based in Churchgate, said municipal schools and public grounds could play a much larger role in grassroots football development. “If the responsible bodies were to provide public ground and make sure that my coaches are compensated, we at Grasshoppers would be happy to coach them,” he said. “BMC schools normally have grounds that are attached, and if those grounds were made available, we would be more than happy to offer coaches to those programs.”