THAT Kingfisher East Bengal never had to score a goal against its opponent in the final - the Brazilian giant Sociedadh Esportiva Palmeiras' 'B' team - while becoming the champion of the 107th IFA Challenge Shield event, invited both ridicule and rage. It ultimately became the prerogative of the organiser - the Indian Football Association - to decide the winner in the confines of the office. Such a situation was compelled by the "abandonment" of the final as the general practice of determining the winner on the merit of the action on the field ended in violence at Kolkata's Salt Lake Stadium.
The action on the final day was stopped after just 36 (out of the stipulated 90) minutes of play following which the players of the two teams preferred to abandon the ball and all the proprieties of the game to involve themselves in attacking each other in a shameless act of rowdyism. There was hardly anyone within the playing arena who could claim non-involvement in the bruising and bitter skirmish that led to the abandonment. While the Brazilians left for their country the very next day of the final, complaining and threatening, the organiser - apparently pressed by the domestic considerations - sided with the local team and "scratched" the foreign opposition from the tournament for "gross act of indiscipline," as one of the IFA joint secretaries announcing the outcome of the meeting had vociferously to declare.
The IFA decision thus paved the way for the rare instance of a team winning the title owing more to the deliberations inside a conference room while the real action on field had it losing. East Bengal trailed Palmeiras 0-1 by striker Reinaldo de Souza's 25th minute goal before the match was abandoned. East Bengal had thus won its first title of the season by default.
Palmeiras had no options about the verdict taken in absentia but it left the city promising to take up the matter with the world governing body - FIFA. The IFA decision too appeared to be half-baked, more because of the fact that it gave East Bengal the trophy, absolving it of all the crimes. Even if the video footage, the reports of the referee, P. Bhaskar from Tamil Nadu, the match commissioner, M. S. Krishnamurthy from Karnataka, that the IFA took into account indicated the visitors to be the perpetrators of violence initially, the host team's more aggressive retaliation was apparently overlooked. The incident was witnessed by almost all the IFA officials and the thousands of spectators who had turned up for the match. Had the home team, backed by the galleries baying for blood, not reciprocated the violent action there could not have been a frenzied showdown of such a magnitude. In the end the verdict appeared one-sided.
The root of such an episode can be traced more to the reluctance of the home team to play the final on the scheduled evening. Having beaten arch-rival Mohun Bagan 2-1 in a postponed semifinal (pushed back to accommodate the replay of an abandoned quarterfinal) just a day before the title encounter, East Bengal justifiably sought a day's break. But with Palmeiras scheduled to leave the next day, the organiser had to coerce the local team to agreement.
Starting on a note of dissension, the final experienced early trouble. With the match well into 20 minutes, East Bengal suddenly protested against the make of the ball. As the officials prepared to rectify the "mistake," Palmeiras pulled out of action. The organiser had to get into another round of persuasion, this time with the visitor. The seeds of the impending strife were sown here. The language being the biggest hindrance, the visitors construed the sudden changing of the ball as something devious on the part of the locals. Palmeiras was made to understand that the first ball was not of the brand that was officially certified, the match restarted after a break of eight minutes. The visitor gained the lead within minutes after the restart and was seen resorting to rough tackles as East Bengal tried to fight back. A foul on East Bengal forward Omolaja Olalekan by a Palmeiras defender in the 36th minute acted as the incendiary starting off the sequel of vengeance involving the players and a few officials of both the sides.
Referee P. Bhaskar got some flak for leniency. Both East Bengal and Palmeiras, having drawn up their senses after the match, said that the referee should have gone for more stringency to have such a highly charged encounter under control. One such instance was when Palmeiras defender Marco Santana snatched the ball from the referee's hands and kicked it into the galleries while the dispute with the ball was being settled. It definitely deserved a send-off but the player went unpunished, thereby setting a dangerous precedent.
Everything went on the desired lines till the semifinals. With 12 teams divided into four groups of three teams each in the pre-quarterfinal group league stage, the order progressing to the knock-out quarterfinals contained all the fancied names. Four teams - defending champion East Bengal, Mohun Bagan, Nam Dinh FC of Vietnam and Palmeiras - were seeded to head four groups. In group A East Bengal encountered little problems against local challengers - Tollygunge Agragami (4-1) and Mohammedan Sporting (5-1) - in retaining the top spot. Agragami beat Mohammedan Sporting 4-0 to earn the second spot and moved into the knock-out quarterfinals with the local giant. Two teams from each group progressed to the knock-out stage.
In Group B Mohun Bagan struggled against FC Kochin before holding the latter 1-1 in a tough encounter. Bagan earned the top spot and avoided meeting East Bengal in the quaterfinals by virtue of its 3-1 win against local qualifier Ever Ready FC, while Kochin dropped to the second spot on goal average managing only a 1-0 win against the same opponent. In Group C Muktijoddha Sangshad of Bangladesh and Nam Dinh moved up while the Indian under-19 team lost both its matches to be ejected in the very first round.
Palmeiras received a shock from CSL Bhratri Sangha - the newly formed Kolkata team under coach Shabbir Ali - which held the fancied Brazilians 1-1 displaying an exceptional sense of tact and technique. The scorer of the equaliser for Bhratri Sangha - the diminutive overlapping right-back Babun Kar - was the hero of the evening. Ironically, the achievement went unavailing as the team crashed out of the meet having lost its earlier match 1-2 to a bunch of youthful footballers from Tata Football Academy (TFA).
The quarterfinals again screened the seconds picking up the best in the available hierarchy. Mohun Bagan had to play Agragami twice - the first day of its match being abandoned midway owing to a torrential downpour as the former struggled to hold the latter 1-1 - and emerged the winner managing a 2-1 scoreline in the rematch. But Bagan's hard-earned victory left enough scars as the team lost two key players - striker Sereiki Abdulatief and midfielder James Singh - owing to suspension in the face-off against arch-rival East Bengal in the semifinals.
East Bengal sank FC Kochin by half-a-dozen goals - with substitute striker Bijen Singh scoring the only hat-trick of the tournament - on a rain-drenched turf to bring up the biggest margin of victory in the tournament. The only excuse the FC Kochin coach, A.M. Sreedharan, had to offer about the humiliating defeat was that the team was not equipped with boots fitted with longer studs, which left the players paint a comic picture slipping and falling all over the sodden turf during most of the action. Palmeiras made the Vietnamese visitor - Nam Dinh - look hapless before powering to a 6-1 win. Muktijoddha had little trouble in defeating TFA 3-0 to complete the semifinal format.
Unlike the quarterfinals, the semifinals did not inspire the action that brought up so many goals. Both the matches produced identical scorelines as Palmeiras beat Muktijoddha Sangshad and East Bengal got the better of Mohun Bagan - for the first time in the season. The winners in both the encounters were made to exert for every bit of advantage as the contests assumed a psychological tenor. This was evident more in the first semifinal pitting Palmeiras against Muktijiddha at the Municipal Stadium, Howrah (the other venue used in the 16-day competition). With the match going in favour of the Brazilian team, the losing outfit unleashed the gall after the encounter starting off a fight. Though the police controlled the warring teams, it served as a prelude for the final violence.
The results: Final: Palmeiras-B 1 - East Bengal 0 (match abandoned after 36 minutes of play). East Bengal declared winner.
Semifinals: Palmeiras 2 bt Muktijoddha Sangshad 1; East Bengal 2 bt Mohun Bagan 1.
Quarterfinals: Mohun Bagan 2 bt Tollygunge Agragami 1; East Bengal 6 bt FC Kochin 0; Palmeiras 6 bt Nam Dinh 1; Muktijoddha Sangshad 3 bt TFA 0.
VIOLENCE was not the message; the Brazilians came to the country talking about "Peace in the world". Palmeiras displayed the banner everywhere the team went though its departure painted a sad contrast to the initial gospel of peace. Football raises myriad emotions and that is best manifest in the Latin Americans. Alongside their reputation for creating magic with the ball, they also have a long history of playing the most aggressive brand of soccer. Attaching the message of peace to the game of soccer is a new enlightenment and the Brazilians did that well till the semifinals before failing in the last act. Each time the team won a match it appreciated the applause from the galleries and circled the stadium waving the Indian tricolour.
The Brazilian coach, Humberto Ferrhira, talked a lot about football (through a translator). He preferred spontaneity over scientific coaching and presented the Brazilian example saying that the proliferation of too many football schools is killing the innovative nature of the game. He also lamented the disastrous performance by the national team and said that the present team players lack the nationalistic zeal that powered such great names as Pele and Zico. He touched on the topic of politics eating into the psyche of the game.
The last episode apart, the Brazilian team provided a lot of lessons to learn about the game. The seriousness and discipline in their practice is one aspect that threw up a great example for the practitioners of the game in India - placed more than a hundred rungs below in the list of merit than its guest.
As for the two Asian teams in the meet, Vietnam's Nam Dinh presented a refreshing aspect. The team headed by coach Ninh Van Bao took its first trip abroad very seriously as it would add to their experience at the international level. The country has recently launched a semi-professional league which would serve as a precursor to the professionally run club-level soccer like in the rest of the world. The clubs there mostly run on the funds provided by the local government and the national federation. Though being modest in their ambition, the team impressed with a dynamic brand of soccer.
It definitely augurs well for the sport in the nation, which has shown one of the greatest ability to stand up against all odds. And with the shadows of the Terror Tuesday - day that saw mayhem unleashed in America - looming large, the visiting team made it an occasion to remind about the preciousness of peace in the world. Though most of the players in the team were spared the ravages of war, almost each of the senior members has something to relate about the country's resistance to the American aggression. Bao helped ferry the injured from the battle front while the team's interpreter Dang Ngoc Chu acted as a translator for the Soviet military officials. And having lost their brothers in the fight against the enemy, they knew what they were talking about.
The team from Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangshad was a known name having played in the city on earlier occasions. The team was joined by a new coach, Mohammad Abu Yusuf, after a bad showing in the local league.
The new coach now has the task of improving the team's prospects in the impending national league of the country where the 10 best clubs of Bangladesh participate. The IFA Shield thus gave a good opportunity to test the strength of the team as well as give the boys some good match practice against quality opponents.
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