Syed Abdul Rahim coached the Indian national football team from 1950 to 1963 and took it to heights that Indian football has not approached since. He is not a household name. He should be. Maidaan is an attempt to correct that omission, and it is, for its first two acts, a very good attempt.
Ajay Devgn plays Rahim with the measured intensity that has become his default setting, which here is the right setting. Rahim was not a flamboyant man. He was a strategist — a man who looked at a set of conditions and thought, methodically, about how to change them. Devgn conveys this quality without making it dull. The scenes where Rahim trains players who have never had formal coaching, drilling fundamentals into men who were playing on instinct alone, are the film's best.
The football sequences are, on the whole, impressively staged. The 1956 Melbourne Olympics material has genuine energy, and the crowd sequences were clearly not achieved cheaply. The visual effects vary — some shots hold, others do not — but the ambition is legible.
The film's third act is where the sentimentality that has been lurking throughout finally takes over. The emotional beats become predictable, the editing less assured. The film earns its finale but reaches it through some unnecessary detours.
Worth watching for the history, if nothing else. India had a football team once. This is the proof.