• Yashwanth Kumar slips into a waterfall in Rome; body unlikely to arrive in Mysuru
• First Indian player to participate in Italian Serie B Futsal League

Mysore/Mysuru: The city has lost a young futsal player who was aiming to make it big in the international leagues. From a humble beginning, 23-year-old Yashwanth Kumar rose to play in the Italian Serie B National Championships that have a huge fan following there. 

He died in Rome on Aug. 6 and his heart-broken family is awaiting his ashes to arrive from the foreign shores. Reports said that the tragedy occurred at a waterfall in Rome where Yashwanth accidentally slipped and fell.

Yashwanth Kumar is the son of N. Kumar and N. Roopa of N.R. Mohalla. Kumar is an inlay artist who has got a State award. He is into the business of handicrafts while Roopa too is an woodcraft artist and joins her husband in the business. While playing for the international team, Yashwanth was pursuing his Masters in Marketing at the Rome Business School. He had been to Rome just four months back and he was passionate about futsal and had obtained special training and had the knack to play. 

In fact, Yashwanth is the first Indian player to participate in Italian Serie B Futsal League and his stellar performance got him a two-year contract with Calcio C5 team.

Shocking news on Aug. 6

Speaking to Star of Mysore in an extremely emotional state, Yashwanth’s father Kumar said that they had not come into contact with him for a couple of days and as such a message was sent to the team captain. “The team captain told us on Aug. 6 that Yashwanth was no more and he had fallen in the waterfall. But the captain had not confirmed it and the news was confirmed by the Police next day after obtaining the fingerprints. There is no flight facility to Italy till Aug. 31 due to COVID,” he revealed.

“My son’s body has been retrieved in a decomposed state and a few Kannadigas in Rome attached to Kannada Association have come forward to cremate his body and send us the ashes. We cannot go to Rome in the current situation and we were told that Italian authorities are looking into the case and more details are awaited. The autopsy is expected today and the last rites might be held in the next two days. The body is unlikely to come to Mysuru,” Kumar said.

Stellar performance

A mechanical engineer from Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering, Yashwanth had rubbed shoulders with legendary international football players while playing in the Premier Futsal League. Notably, when he was planning to fly to Rome, his college and friends pooled in Rs. 1 lakh for him to meet his immediate expenses.

He was among the 40 players out of 1,200 to get selected for the Premier Futsal League in India and was later selected by the Kerala Futsal Team. On seeing his performance in the league matches, the Indian selectors picked him for the national team two years ago. He played for the team in Barcelona and later in Sri Lanka.

Playing football when he was in Class 7, Yashwanth trained hard in futsal and was agile in his manoeuvres. To achieve his international league goals in futsal, Yashwanth was also pursuing his Masters in Marketing and looked up to legendary players like Paul Scholes and Michel Salgado for inspiration.

On July 18, 2019, Star of Mysore had published a feature on Yashwanth Kumar under the title ‘What a kick!: City’s futsal player makes it to Italy.’ 

About futsal

The game is a popular one in Italy. The game is a variant of association football played on a hard court where the field is smaller than a football pitch. It is mainly played indoors and is considered as a version of five-a-side football. Futsal is played between two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper.