Ankita Pandey
DNA
Tuesday, October 25, 2005 01:13 IST
MARGAO: Eat football, drink football, sleep football. No, that aint a typing error. Sure the official Pepsi ad said cricket in the 1999 World Cup in England. But, like they say, when in Goa, do as the Goans do. And whoever heard of cricket in this pint-sized state.
Cricket! Thats not even a game. Two people play, while the rest stand and watch, is the typical Goan jab for what is considered by many as the elitists sport.
| Winning moment: Churchill players celebrate their quarter-final win over East Bengal. The Goan team won 10-9 in sudden death Vipin Pawar/DNA |
So it is only befitting that three Goan teams (the fourth being Mahindra United from Mumbai) will make it to the semi-finals of the 2005 Alchmemist Federation Cup, being played at the Nehru Stadium in Fatorda here.
Churchill Brothers are already through, beating East Bengal 10-9 in the tie breaker in a nail-bitting finish on Sunday night. Sporting Clube de Goa and the winner of the Salgaocar-Vasco take the final two spots on Monday and Tuesday.
The big news, however, is that it will only be the second time in the history of Federation Cup that no team from Bengal, on participation, has made it to the semi-finals. The last time was in 1991 in Kannanur, where both East Bengal and Mohun Bagan bowed out of the quarter-finals. The winners were Kerala Police, who beat Mahindra United 2-1 in the finals.
The Federation Cup was first held in the year 1997 in Ernakulam. ITI Bangalore beat Mohun Bagan in the finals to emerge the first victors of this coveted trophy. The 2005 tournament is the 27th edition. And the presence of no Bengal team becomes even bigger when you realise that of 27 titles, Mohun Bagan (11), East Bengal (4) and Mohammed Sporting (2) have won 17 between them. So what went wrong this year, despite the two power houses (Mohun Bagan and East Bengal) fielding star-studded teams?
Its a knockout tournament. Anything can happen, said a dejected Subhas Bhowmik, coach of the East Bengal team, after their quarter-final loss to Churchill Brothers. No team from Bengal Thats part of life. You have to live with it.
All Bengal teams have different reasons for not doing well in the tournament. Mohammedan Sporting lost out to Fransa 2-1 in the quarters. The match turned ugly in the last minutes with a huge fight erupting between the players.
After the regulation time, the fourth official had shown five minutes of added time. But the referee only played out three. We could have equalised as we kept up the pressure. We had a couple of decisions going against us in the match also, said Biswajit Bhattacharya, coach, Mohammedan Sporting.
Mohun Bagans star-studded outfit just didnt click against a resolute Vasco side. They lost out on penalties, 6-5. Bagan had already won the Kolkata League coming into this tournament.
The fourth Bengal team in fray, Tollygunge Agramani, went out without making any impression.
Interestingly, the teams fielded by Bagan and East Bengal had only four and three Bengal players respectively. One wouldnt be committing blasphemy to state that in the last decade, Bengals football success has been the result of the toils of players from other lands.
Baichung Bhutia, IM Vijayan and Jo Paul Ancheri are the biggest examples. Why has the production gone dry?
If you look at the history of Bengal football, it has gone through many phases.
The period from Independence up to the late 1960s saw footballers from outside Bengal dominating the game in the State. That changed in the following 15 years, up to the first half of the 80s, with the emergence of a lot of local talent. The nineties trend has again reverted back to imports from across the country and outside.
The finest era in Bengal football was during the playing days of Chunni Goswami, S Manna, PK Bannerjee, Arun Ghosh, Tarun Bose, Subhash Bhowmick, Subrata Bhattacharya and many more.
However, now teams like East Bengal depend on the strike force of Mike Okoro (Nigeria), Baichung Bhutia (Sikkim) and Sydney Nkalanga (South Africa), to name a few. Bagan brought Togolese striker Gley Yao Rodrigue to patch up deficiencies up front.
In contrast, Goa has slowly and steadily harnessed its local talent pool, converting them into the most wanted list of top clubs. Savio Messias, secretary, Goa Football Association (GFA) says: Most clubs in Goa are privately driven ventures, propelled not by monetary interests but by their passion for the game. And since its our biggest and in some ways only sport, the local government too has come forward to support us financially.
Goa holds more that 7,000 matches in the State at all levels, including inter-village matches, probably the highest number in the country. Over the last couple of years, a lot of youth development programmes, centres of excellence for children in the age group of 16 to 19 have come up. All this has had a direct relation to the success of Goan clubs in the National League also.
Salgaocar was the first Goan team to win the NFL in 1998. And Dempo added a second to the tally last year.
These two teams also have four Federation Cup titles between them. Salgaocar has three with wins in 1988, 89 and 97 (a double strike by Bruno Coutinho won them the game 2-1 against East Bengal in Kolkata), while Dempo were the champions last year.
Indian football has cut a sorry figure so many times that its heartening to hear a success story emerging some where.
So if Mahindra United doesnt spoil the party, when the Alchemist Federation Cup ends on October 30, all of Goa will raise a toast to its fifth Federation Cup champion.
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