Football has always been the greatest passion of Malappuram. Whenever a ball is taken to the ground, it creates a festival ambience here. Go to the streets, markets or beach you would be surprised to see people in the jersey of Brazil and Argentina. Often the district is deemed as the soccer hotspot of Kerala, so much so that the football freaks of the place have invented a shorter version of the game called Sevens. The rules are different and so are the playing time and ground.
Each team will have seven players. The match will be played for an hour. The ground will be comparatively smaller. Red cards are rarely taken out by the referee and offside rules are mostly overlooked. People believe that the lack of large grounds is the reason for the development of this different version of soccer.
Almost all the villages in Malappuram will be having a club of their own. Sevens festival season in Malappuram often extends from November to May. Nowadays players are recruited even from foreign countries like Nigeria, Sudan and Africa.