Panaji (Goa), Nov 4: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Swachh Bharat Abhiyan" (Clean India Campaign) seems to have inspired football fans at Indian Super League (ISL) to clean up the stadium.

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Last month (October 23), after the ISL match between FC Goa and Atletico de Kolkata, a few Goan fans at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Fatorda, stayed back to remove the trash from one of the stands.

This cleaning drive came despite having seen their team losing to the visitors 1-2. There was very little to celebrate for them but under "ANM Clean Revolution", the Goan fans ensured that they did their bit to keep the stadium clean for the future matches.

Such cleaning act by the fans is rare or unheard of, at Indian stadiums. The culture of cleaning a stadium is seen in Japan during matches. The same was witnessed at this year's FIFA World Cup in Brazil where Japanese fans cleaned the stadium after their team's match against Ivory Coast.

Now, with the whole nation, including celebrities doing their bit to keep their surroundings clean following Modi's "Clean India" drive, these youths of Goa have showed the way for other fans at various stadiums.

"We looked at each other, we knew it was going to be hell cleaning the whole stadium. So we said we'll at least clean our stand. And it is a big stand. We set to work. Picking up your plastics, flags, pizzas, boxes, coke, pepsi, ice cream left overs, water bottles, all of which was dripping over our hands, but we didn't give up," a post on FC Goa's fans Facebook page read about the cleaning drive.

"3 of us cleaned the whole of East stand. Collecting about at least half a truck full of garbage. That was a shocking sight. The logo of FC Goa that we respect so much was left to be stamped upon by people," it added.

The post was accompanied by few pictures showing the men cleaning the chairs.

At the end, the message read, "This is your Goa, this is your stadium. There are people there to clean it I know, but that doesn't give you the right to dirty it."

Hope others follow this example.

OneIndia News