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Stormy Days and Stormy Nights: Some Positive Thoughts - by Prithwijit Majumdar
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NFL 2005, which started with lots of hope for the Mariners, has virtually been reduced to ashes as far as the title hopes of Mohun Bagan are concerned. Now the quest is whether the century old institution can curve out a respectable position for itself in the league table. Why this happened? Who is to be blamed? What should we do? are now questions that have attained paramount importance now. Let me analyze these questions one by one as I feel that once know why then only we come to who and then finally we come to what.
In my article on the eve of the NFL, I mentioned that our team is one of the prime contenders for the title. And I still believe that I was right. A team, which boasts of such a creative midfield, one of the nippiest strikers in Indian football and a more or less well-organized defence should aspire big. But things didn’t go our way, as we would have liked. The team, which had in the very season defeated almost all the big guns of Indian football, seemed as if they had left their scoring boots into oblivion. It didn’t look the same team, which had reached the finals of all the major tournaments this year only. I think that the match against Mahindra& Mahindra proved to be big dent to our title hopes. Having lost a match after dominating 89mins 59secs is certainly not what a team would like to contain it. This has had its spillover effects on other matches as well as I think, the team could never recover from this shock. In a league format where ach team gets to play 22 matches home and way, it’s an impossibility to play well consistently. Its all about maximizing the points as and when they are on offer. Win our best games and share points on those days, which aren’t the best in office. Over almost all the leagues in the world we see this feature. Even our past successes have come via the same recipe. This year unfortunately we faultered in this agenda. We missed golden chances to score and put presurre on ourselves and finally conceded goals to lose points thereby putting pressure on us back again. For whatever has happened its easy to blame the coach as mid-season its only him we can change and not the players. From whatever little knowledge about the game I have acquired I believe that everywhere coaches serve only as technical persons who draw up strategies and discover routes as to how to penetrate the opponent defence. I think our coach has been absolutely up to the mark as far as this is concerned. We have dominated matches, created numerous openings and have till date scored only 5 goals in 10 matches, an unprecedented strike rate for the 115-year-old Club.
One weakness of ours has been in the recruitment of foreigners. With all regards to him, Beto isn’t what our situation demanded. We needed as I have told time and again a bull-dozing striker who could physically torment the opposition defence leaving open space for Ashim or Chettry or the other medios. True Beto has a good touch but aren’t we already superfluous as far as creativity is concerned? Also he is slow and lacks the sudden thrust to leave the defence gasping for breath. We could have been better off with an Akeem or Seriki or even a Eugene Gray. But that was not to be. If we analyse our matches we would realize that in almost all the matches we have got around 6-7 corners but failed to cash in. Also many good centers from the wings have gone begging. This shows a sheers lack of heading prowess on the part of our strikers. A coach cannot be expected to do wonders overnight. With an average height of 5ft5inches,we cannot aerially challenge most of the teams in this NFL.Our strength is our ground passing but that too could not be fully exploited due to injuries to key players like Tomba or Noel and also poor finishing by our strikers. In such a situation defence often has gone up only to add to our woes by conceding a goal, in most cases against the run of play. Babalade could have checked this but he too seems to have been roped in only to provide him with proper medical treatment for his enlarged liver!!!!!!!,courtesy our officials.
Now where to go from here? I reckon that 2 wins in a row can put us back on winning ways once again. Though that doesn’t mean we will be the champions but yes we can still achieve a respectable position, as far as the position of other teams is concerned.
For whatever has happened if we blame somebody I would personally blame the current football management.Mr.Balaram Chowdhury despite all his good intentions, otherwise he would not have shelled out 50lacs plus from his pocket, has failed to knit together a balanced team.His recruiters have not recruited a good and tough central medio who can destroy oppsition attacks in the bud.Noel Wilson in our team could have been better used as playmaker if we had options in this regard.Also the team lacks power, there is predominance of soft players which also has proved to be a deterrent. The management barring a few has also been more interested in mud slinging and back biting rather than sticking together which matters the most in trying times. Some of our so called officials find solace only in abusing the coach when the situation demands a show of confidence to him.
Having talked at length about all this I sincerely believe that once the 2nd league starts and we are out o the danger zone the focus should be on team building for the coming season. I believe strongly that ours is the most talented team in the country currently (Salgaonkar coach has also reiterated that) and so we need to retain most of our current players.A few chanf=ges are however requied.One powerfully built foreign striker is required,may be Dudu and another stopper is required,along with a few local lads like Shankha Rowchoudhury and Gouranga Dutta. I guess with proper planning,mamangement and unity we can once again reclaim our position at the top.
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