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The Bengaluru FC Under-15s have just returned from their fantastic showing at the Manchester United Premier Cup where, after winning the regional title, they finished runners-up at the India-leg.
Head of youth development, Richard Hood talks about the experience in Pune and what lies ahead for the impressive bunch of youngsters.
It’s the first tournament that the Colts have played since coming together in August. How would you review the experience?
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Given the time spent working with the boys, we went with modest expectations. From the beginning we stressed on picking boys with good technical abilities and then assigned them positions. Our training programs are based on those of the senior team where we use intensity, quality and consistency as a framework. All said, we were nervous as our first league engagement was against Salgaocar FC – a club that has won this tournament before. But beating them 4-1 settled all the nerves and we enjoyed the experience then on.
Did you expect going as far as the boys did? When did the belief strengthen?
We had set targets for each game and drawn plans of what we would come up against. But once we picked up six points from two games, we started believing about a spot in the regional semifinal. The belief only grew stronger with every subsequent success. We knew the All-India semifinal would be tough given we were up against Mohammedan Sporting. But we relied on us being an organized side and to be honest, weren’t surprised making it to the final.
How disappointing was it to lose out in the final after coming so far?
Any defeat is disappointing but more so when it is in a final. We had seen BMSC Manipur play and have no qualms in accepting that they were a lot stronger and technically better than us. The encouraging thing is we never compromised on our style of play even in the final. In fact, we scored the opener and that gave us a lot of belief.
The team traveled with young coaching staff for the Cup. Your take on their performance…
Saksham Kakkar came in to the set up given his strong credentials and has grown a lot as a professional coach. The success achieved is a massive credit for the way he handled the team on the bench and in the team talks. We expect a lot more to come from him in the coming seasons.
What next for the team?
We’ve definitely set a high playing standard for ourselves and keeping these parameters in mind, I expect future outcomes to be the same. We will be participating in competitive tournaments and travel across the country, playing academy and youth teams to get a better idea of where we stand. All the boys on the squad are from Bangalore and it is pretty much in line with our philosophy of promoting talent from the city. We next travel to Delhi to play the seven-a-side Adidas Bayern Munich Cup. There’s no pressure to win titles but to perform at their best.
