“No, I should learn, really, but it’s difficult,” says Ryan Williams after a little chuckle. The 32-year-old was asked whether he had learnt Hindi yet, an unusual question to ask someone who plays for India in any sport, but there is little that is usual about Williams.
He is the first footballer in over a decade to have given up a foreign passport to play for India. Williams had to, in his words, “beat through the bushes” and make his own way. But once there, he straightaway became the fulcrum of the ailing Indian team’s midfield and forward line.
Williams scored within the first four minutes of his debut in a late last month and then went on to orchestrate several moves that gave the team a fluency up front that they’d sorely lacked in recent years.
His first touch of the ball in Indian colours. Ryan Williams is no stranger to big occasions. 🔝
Relive the no. 🔟’s first goal from , in Kochi. 💙
— FC (@bengalurufc)
Clearly, it was the language of football that mattered, and the former Australian spoke it better than most Indian players of his age. The literal language barrier was reduced to a source of amusement.
“In the national team, they speak a lot more Hindi than at Bengaluru FC (his Indian Super League team). So I kind of pick up this and that, and know the gist of most conversations. When (head coach) Khalid (Jamil) would be speaking to the group in Hindi, and then turn around and ask me, ‘oh no! Ryan, did you understand what I said?’ I’d say sorry. So I’m going to try,” Williams tells The Indian Express.
Williams emerged from those “bushes” that he said he had to navigate to play for India, in Kochi, home of the Kerala Blasters whose rivalry with Bengaluru FC, the club that he is pretty much the face of along with Sunil Chhetri, is among the more famous ones in the ISL. Williams knows that club allegiances rarely matter for Indian fans when the national team is playing and yet, he was touched by the local fans cheering for him.
“Last season, I didn’t play there because I was injured, but the first season I came here it was extremely hostile, extremely humid, just not a nice place to go when you’re in the opposition. But for them to put everything aside and put India forward was really special. They were all cheering for me just like they would for any other India player. So it really made me feel welcome.”
Williams was born into a footballing family on October 28, 1993 in Subiaco, a suburb in Perth, Australia. His grandfather Linky Grostate scored the winning goal for in the 1956 Santosh Trophy semi-final against Bengal. His mother Audrey played for Western Australia after moving Down Under in 1974. Ryan’s father Eric was a semi-professional football player who had a coaching career that took him to Myanmar and Malaysia. Ryan’s older brother Rhys Williams represented Wales in his under-age years before switching to Australia and making 14 appearances for the national side. His twin brother Aryn played for Imphal-based NEROCA FC in the erstwhile I-League between 2017 and 2019.
One doesn’t really need to look at the FIFA rankings to know that Australia is much ahead of India in football. Moreover, with India failing to qualify for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup, the next big tournament that they can realistically aspire for is the 2031 edition, by which time Williams will be 37. And yet, he says, his family’s history with Indian football, and just his own desire to play at the international level, pretty much negated any inhibitions he may have had about switching nationalities.
“I’m a ‘live for the moment’ type of guy,” Williams says. “I can categorically say I don’t regret the decision.”
Williams admits that just the fact that he wanted to play international football was a reason to change nationalities, apart from his family’s history with India.
“I wanted to do something different and (there was) just the lure of international football. But to represent India is special. It doesn’t just mean something for me, it means something to my family, especially my grandparents, my mum, all my cousins,” he says.
