BEND IT LIKE BICHARPUR

Chief ministers visiting foreign locales are often chasing investments for their states, but Madhya Pradesh CM Mohan Yadav had a rather more unusual pit stop on his trip to Spain.

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He dropped by La Liga headquarters, home of the Spanish football league, and invited them to invest in MP's sports infrastructure and train the local youth. This raised more than a few eyebrows, of course, since MP barely registers on the football map of India. The answer may well lie in Bicharpur, a village near tribal-dominated Shahdol, whose football chops led PM Narendra Modi to dub it a "mini Brazil" in one of his Mann ki Baat episodes. Yadav may not be able to tell offside in football, but he sure does know who mans the goalposts.

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