If there was a case of football running in a person’s blood, Asim Hassan would be it. Brought into the game by his father, Ali Hassan, a football coach at the Mahilpur Football Academy, Asim’s earliest memories of the game are fuzzy.

That’s understandable considering that he believes that his love for the game as early as the age of two. The Punjabi lad considers his father a major influence on his game.

The slightly built, softly spoken Asim representational honours began with playing the Under-14 team for Doaba Public School. Later he played for his native Hoshiarpur district for two years at the Under-17 level.

He then joined the Mahilpur Football Academy in the Under-19 batch and honed his game there for three years. Mahilpur is another little known football crazy outpost, a city which is crazy about the game. It has produced stalwarts of Indian football of the likes of Jarnail Singh, Manjeet Singh, Gurdev Gill, Yashpal, Tejinder Kumar amongst many others.

The next logical step for any budding footballer in Punjab was the JCT Academy and it was no different for the midfielder. He graduated out of the Academy a couple of years later and joined the JCT senior team in 2007 at the age of 22.

His one year at JCT was not completely satisfactory mainly due to the lack of game time he got. JCT at that time had a whole host of stars playing for them including the Brazilian Eduardo and Sunil Chhetri. In the 2008 season, Asim joined Pune FC where it can be said that his pro career really began.

Hassan, now in his fifth year, is a recessed midfielder at Pune FC but he can see the larger picture which makes him, in some respects, a playmaker. He has an appetite for taking the game in to opposing off where his shooting skills can make him dangerous.

His biggest moment in the game came during a crucial Pune FC match against Sesa Goa FA in a Second Division I-League final round encounter back in 2008-09. While it was not a tough match, in terms of strength of opposition, but Pune FC needed a win which they got.

Asim missed most of the previous season with an injury. He has high hopes of the upcoming season and is looking to make a fresh start.

Apart from the game, Hassan favours Punjabi pop artistes, Jazzy B and Babbu Mann. He also surfs the net quite a bit but loves more than anything else, the time he spends with his friends.