For decades, football in India was dominated by Bengal. And for decades, the only football match fans and patrons across India were ever interested in, was the one between the two Bengal arch-rivals Mohun Bagan and East Bengal.
All that changed somewhat with the advent of the millennium and with Goa usurping the title of ‘football powerhouse’ of the country.
Clubs from Kerala, Punjab and today Karnataka, in the form of Bengaluru FC, also started getting the better of the legendary Bengal football clubs pretty regularly. Then came the deluge of footballing talent from the North-Eastern states of the country, riding on the popularity and success of one Baichung Bhutia, arguably one of the best the country has ever produced.
Today, the seven North-Eastern states collectively, are considered the powerhouse of Indian football and rightly so. You only have to look at the bountiful of players from the region representing the Indian national team as well as the I-league and ISL teams to corroborate this fact. On the contrary, you would be hard-pressed to find a footballer from Bengal in the national side or in the I-league and ISL teams today.
Football’s popularity in Bengal
Old-timers in Bengal’s famous ‘maidan’ circles, the vast swathes of green in the middle of the city which houses the State’s multitude of football and other sports clubs and have been the breeding ground of India’s premier footballing talent in the years gone by, have long lamented the decline of the State’s footballing dominance to the extent of sounding the death knell for the sport in Bengal.
So what is the reality of football in Bengal today? Has the sport and its lure for the State’s youth really dead? Has the popularity of cricket and the success of Sourav Ganguly really overwhelmed football’s popularity in the state in favour of Cricket?
A look at the ISL squads assembled for season three of the country’s richest football league, scheduled to begin on October 1, and featuring a total of eight teams playing 61 matches across a two-and-a-half-month period, indicates football in Bengal is still very much alive.
As many as 20 home-bred Bengali footballers find place in each of the eight squads, probably still the highest number for one single state of the country. Naturally, the local club Atletico de Kolkata, is home to seven of them, the highest among all franchisees.
Chennai and Mumbai have one player each from the state and the others have at least two, with Kerala picking three footballers from Bengal. This is above and beyond the players who play for other leading clubs in the country including the Big Two and could not find place in an ISL squad.
Defenders over attacking talents
What has probably changed is the kind of players from the state that today make it to the highest levels of the sport in the country. Today, Bengal is producing India’s best goalkeepers and defenders. These are not the glamour positions in the game.
The ball players, centre-forwards, forwards and strikers, who hog the maximum media limelight in the sport across the globe, are not very forthcoming from Bengal today. Although, few would remember that even in the first season, the ISL title-winning goal was scored by Md. Rafique, a homegrown footballer of Bengal.
This phenomenon is probably due to the advent of professionalism in the sport and more money coming into it, given the benefits of economic growth and liberalisation. What they did was make it more affordable for the leading clubs in Bengal to invest in foreign players in particular, who were deemed more expensive than local talent. And all efforts were concentrated in getting foreign players who were either thought to be goal scorers or were at least attacking players.
The ‘goal’ is the be all and end all of football, you see. So, right from the Majid Bishkar-Jamshed Nasiri days to Cheema Okorie to the modern era forwards and strikers like Odafa Okolie, Ranty Martins, Katsumi Yusa, Sony Norde or Do Dong Hyun, there has hardly been any defender or goalkeeper who made his mark in this country and in the ‘maidans’ of Bengal playing football. This probably led to the local Bengal boys learning to defend the goal better.
Which is probably why Subroto Paul (ISL- North East United FC) is still the senior goalkeeper in the Indian side today and Arnab Mondal (ISL-ATK), Pritam Kotal (ISL-ATK) and Narayan Das (ISL-Pune City FC) make up the bulwark of the Indian defence.
Among the 20 from Bengal playing the ISL this year, there are as many as seven goalkeepers and as many as 11 defenders or defensive midfielders clearly indicating a prevailing trend.
Players from all over the state
Football in Bengal is definitely thriving and players from the State are still very much there in the national side as well. The other heartening factor is that the beautiful game is thriving not only in the capital city of Kolkata but in the districts and towns of the larger State of Bengal as well.
The 20 Bengal footballers playing in the ISL hail from district towns and suburbs like Barackpore, Bardhaman, Budge Budge, Habra, Katwa, Madhyamgram, Sodepur, Tribeni and Uttarpara, apart from Kolkata.
It is totally understandable where the old timers and die-hards are coming from. They were more used to a Krishanu Dey (probably the best Indian footballer ever), Sudip Chatterjee and Prasanta Banerjee controlling the midfield or a Shishir Ghosh poaching goals at will for India. Going back even further in time the Chuni Goswamis and P.K.Bannerjees and Subhash Bhowmicks and their attacking flair is probably sorely missed.
But you need to accept change if you want to progress and continue to support the present generation of Bengal footballers. Bengal still has the talent, the footballing infrastructure and most importantly the enthusiasm and the passion for the game.
With continued support of fans, it is only a matter of time when the glamour forwards and strikers emerge on the national footballing scene. Till then, Bengal fans must believe that defending and protecting the goal is as important as scoring one. Ask the Azzuris!
