“How can any Indian league be complete without a team from Kashmir?” It’s a simple question, almost naïve in how plainly it’s asked. But in SonyLIV’s Real Kashmir Football Club, this question becomes an emotional compass of the entire series. It’s the line that drives journalist-turned-manager Sohail (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), the line that exposes the region’s absence from the national sporting map, and the line that tugged at viewers’ hearts as an Indian watching this story unfold. SonyLIV’s Real Kashmir Football Club, directed by Mahesh Mathai and Rajesh Mapuskar, opens with an image that is at once frightening and strangely tender. A grenade tossed into a crowded protest by Aman sends people scattering in panic, until a policeman discovers it’s fake, and a young boy casually kicks it away like a football. This moment, absurd and poignant in equal measure, captures the paradox in which the story of Real Kashmir FC is rooted: a region accustomed to fear, still finding ways to play, dream, and claim space. At the centre of this eight-episode series is …