NEWS
MATCH REPORTS
STAT SHEET
HOT LINKS
OTHER SPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
BOOKS & THINGS
PEOPLE
DEAR REDIFF

Indian football - confusion worse confounded

K Bhaskaran

Indian football is getting more and more messy. In the past, only late in the season did clash of dates of tournaments highlight the disorganisation. But now it comes to the fore at the start of the season itself.

Even as the eight quarterfinalists of the last National Championships battle it out in the ongoing National Games at the Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore, the Indian Football Association announced the kick-off for the McDowell Cup scheduled for late this week.

Four teams are in the fray in this curtain-raiser to the Calcutta football season: East Bengal, Mohammedan Sporting, an IFA Selection XI and FC Kochin, which is being sponsored by United Breweries, one of whose brands is McDowell whisky.

UB's clout is already being felt by the newly formed FC Kochy. The company, which had sponsored the West Indies team through the last cricket season, has got the stars of FC Kochy to play roles in an ad film. Now the same stars - I M Vijayan, Raman Vijayan, Carlton Chapman, Jo Paul Ancheri, Bernard Operhanzoie among others - will rush to Calcutta from Bangalore to play in the McDowell Cup.

The four-team event could be a lung-opener for FC Kochy, as it has not played any tournament to date.

However, it is significant that the McDowell Cup, supposedly a curtain raiser to the Calcutta season, does not include Mohun Bagan Athletic Club, though its players could find a place in the IFA Selection. Given that Mohun Bagan is one of the most high profile clubs not merely in Calcutta but around the country, this omission is rather inexplicable. This tournament would have afforded the premier club and its coach, Amal Datta, an opportunity to test players who have been retained from last season and also try out the new recruits, in an attempt to forge a viable combination.

But Mohun Bagan is not playing in the McDowell Cup. Is this yet another sign that the champion outfit of yesteryears has fallen on bad days? For, though it won the Calcutta Super Division League, its fortunes have been on the wane over the last couple of seasons. And reports of unsavoury happenings at the administrative level do not help brighten the outlook.

Mohun Bagan has a special niche in Indian football. From the time it triumphed over East Yorks in the final of the 1911 I.F.A. Shield, the club has been a beacon to all top Indian players. Men like Shibdas Bhaduri, Abilas Ghose, Umapati Kumar, Gostha Pal (known as the Great Wall of China and the first footballer to be decorated with the Padma Shri, albeit posthumously), Sailen Manna, Sattar and Jarnail Singh among others have made the green and maroon of the club universally respected.

But times are changing. Where once the Calcutta clubs quelled the challenge of rivals from Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kerala and other centres, today the boot is on the other foot. The Calcutta clubs, East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting, are not so heavily fancied for top honours in glamour tournaments around the country. Indeed they are rated slightly lower than leading teams from Goa and the Punjab, with teams from other major centres less awed at encountering the big three from Calcutta.

A reason, and a weighty one at that, is that Goa and Punjab are proving to be greener pastures for players seeking fame and fortune. And of late, FC Kochy with its bulging coffers has become the lodestar for big name players. Yet the nouveau riche of Indian football will not be able to compete with the Calcutta clubs, if the latter take stock of their assets and reap the dividends.

While Goa's Churchill Brothers, Dempo, Salgaocar, Sesa and one or two other clubs, Punjab's inaugural Philips National League winner in March this year, Jagatjit Cotton and Textiles Mills, and Kerala's FC Kochy have funds, they lack the infrastructure to build the tradition and following of eight decades to a century of their counterparts from Calcutta. The three Calcutta clubs' roots in a particular section of society or community have sustained them and still do, through cross-fertilisation, and through inter-club transfers in the last two or three decades.

This, and the battle for the Calcutta League and the IFA Shield made for prestige. In no other centre of football in India is there a parallel. Not even in Bangalore, which threw up, in an unending stream, talent that the Calcutta clubs baited away.

More crucial to Bengal's ruling of Indian football till recently is the fan following that at times is rabid. Also, basic amenities for playing the game at all levels, senior, junior and novitiate are all in place. Most of the senior clubs have at least one half share of a football ground, a great asset in attracting and grooming the very young.

But when Mohun Bagan, as revealed in the All-India Football Federation's inter-state transfers' list, recruit teenagers from outside Bengal so as to build up an under-19 team, it does give the feeling that the approach and priorities are what they should be.

In the mid-sixties, I had broached this issue of East Bengal spending heavily on drafting players from outside Bengal when the club, instead, should be exploring the feasibility of setting aside the amount for a nursery scheme, in which about 25 to 30 boys could be chosen to train at the club with senior players for two or three years. My thrust was that out of this batch, at least five or six would become good enough to don the club's colours. It would be an investment that would pay handsome dividends.

But at the time, the late Mr J C Guha, the architect of East Bengal, remarked: "East Bengal is a big club, but not a great club!"