Do we need a coach for non-existent national football team?

By John Cheeran

Everyone agrees on this point. To breathe fresh air into Indian football, you have to work at grassroots. Indian footballers, including the senior national squad, lack basic skills of dribbling and controlling. How can any coach, however inspirational and astute he is, teach seniors the basics? He can, of course, improve their tactical play.

By virtue of their lackadaisical display in whatever limited opportunities that came their way in recent times, Indian national footballers are free birds now. They have no burdens of play like teams that have qualified for World Cup, Asian Challenge Cup and Asian Cup. The football competition as part of Asian Games in Incheon in South Korea is only in September. But only three seniors can be in the squad for Asian Games since it is an Under-23 event.

If that's the case, what role do national team coach Wim Koevermans and technical director Rob Baan play?

AIFF brought in Dutch veteran Baan in November 2011. A year later, Baan sold his countryman Koevermans to AIFF in July 2012 as national coach.

Things, however, haven't improved.

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Churchill Alemao: The Big Brother of Indian Football

By John Cheeran

When Churchill Brothers won the Federation Cup for the first time in the club’s history, you could not miss the big brother’s presence.
Churchill Alemao (62), the owner of the club, stepped on to the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi on Saturday night, immediately after the final whistle blew, with a few acolytes in tow holding aloft the club’s red and white flag. Clad in a pathan suit and bathed in floodlights, Alemao stood taller than his six feet. He is unmistakably the don of Indian football. Mobbed by the sparsely crowd that entered the turf, and taking non-stop congratulatory phone calls, there was no mistaking who was the man of the moment. It was not the goal scorers – Balwant Singh, Alesh Swant and Abdel Hamid Shabana—in a 3-1 win over Sporting Clube de Goa, or the coach. It was all about
owner’s pride.

Alemao attributes Churchill Brothers’ Federation Cup victory to divine intervention. When asked what led to the transformation of the team which is lying at the bottom of the I-League standings, he flashed a paper icon of the Jesus Christ from his pocket and said “It is God’s work.” Within seconds, he picked another card from his pocket bearing
the image of Velankanni Matha (Our Lady of Health Velankanni) and added that prayers to her always bring good results.

Alemao is a fascinating man. A former chief minister of Goa and a former Congress MP from South Goa, he knows how to run the show. And take on his opponents. Right now, he is on a collision course with the All India Football Federation (AIFF). Alemao is against the proposed Indian Super League, a two-month event that IMG-Reliance, AIFF’s
marketing partner, is trying to put together. “ISL will kill Indian football. Over the last 30 years, I have spent more than Rs 300 crore on my team. What has AIFF done for Indian football? Now they want us to pay for franchise rights in the proposed league. It is
preposterous,” says a man who quite clearly relishes the winning moment.

Alemao’s daughter -- Valanka Alemao -- is the club’s CEO. She too is delighted with the team’s turnaround in Federation Cup. But Valanka, too, is against the ISL.

Churchill Brothers’ victory, however, brings many contradictions in Indian football together. It is the first Federation Cup victory for the club who are the reigning I-League champions. Currently, in the 13-team I-League at the half way stage, they are at the bottom place with two wins and 10 points. And now the laggards have created history
in Indian football by becoming the first club to lift Federation Cup by winning all their matches--five.

Alemao has a habit of taking snap decisions and firing his coaches in the past for poor performances but he has somehow kept faith in the local Goan boy, Mariano Dias, who guided the side to the I-League triumph in 2012-13, with advice coming in from technical director and former Indian team coach Subash Bhowmick.

With clamour for more professionalism gaining ground in Indian football, it is ironic that a feudal club such as Churchill Brothers have outgunned their much fancied rivals such as Bengaluru FC, backed by the JSW group, and Pune FC, floated by the Piramal Group. Both the clubs have foreign coaches – Bengaluru has Ashely Westwood from England and Pune has the Dutch Mike Snoei and a 10-member support staff to look after every aspect of the game. But they bowed out in the group stage.

The in-thing in Indian club football is to have at least four foreign players in the starting XI, but Churchill could only field two foreigners– Egyptian midfielder Abdul Hamid Shabana and Trinidadian striker Anthony Wolfe- in Federation Cup not out of choice but due to
late signings. When pointed out about achieving success with a fully loaded Indian side and only two foreign players, Alemao said with a broad grin that he has signed two more, one of them Costa Rican striker Cristian Lagos Navarro. Earlier in the season Alemao had
packed off his two underperforming recruits, Nigerian defender Hamed Adesope and Syrian striker Ahmed Al Kaddour, leaving them handicapped ostensibly on fire power.

Alemao has his own ways of kicking a football around. But you have to give to him for sticking with the club through good times and bad times. When Alemao says he has not made any money from investing in the club, you tend to believe him. You almost commiserate with him in his pursuit of vainglory. For, you immediately stumble upon tombstones of dead and disbanded clubs in Indian football—Mahindra United, JCT,
FC Kochin, Viva Kerala, ITI Bangalore, MRF FC, Mafatlals, Premier Tyres, etc.

The easier thing would have been to disband the club and cut the losses as many corporates did. Dodsal Group’s Mumbai Tigers are almost defanged and eating grass now. AIFF, which claims to have a mandate for improving standards in Indian football, too disbanded its side, Indian Arrows. That is the rational and the wise thing to do. But
world and football would have been much less round if not for the likes of the Churchill Brothers.

An eagle circling over Kerala football

By John Cheeran

The barren state of football in Kerala can be best gauged from the eerie silence at the empty Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi when great powers of Indian football such as Mohun Bagan, Churchill Brothers, Salgaocar Goa, Sporting United, Kolkata, and Shillong Lajong battle it out. 

In the first two days, four matches were played out in front of stray spectators, Kerala Football Association (KFA) president K M I Mather, probables for the state Santosh Trophy squad and a 25-odd strong media contingent. Not even a fly from the nearby garbage heap in Kaloor dared to enter the KFA’s fortress. 

All the visiting team coaches and players TOI has spoken to in the last few days are shocked beyond belief at the rotten state of Kerala football and the kind of facilities offered by KFA to them.

Derrick Pereira, Salgaocar coach and former India player, who had led Goa to its first junior national crown at a packed Maharajas College Ground in 1980 still remembers the roar from the football loving Kochi crowd. “Football lovers in Kochi have this rare quality of encouraging any side that plays well. Who shooed them away,” asks Pereira.

The last time a club from Kerala kissed the Federation Cup was in 1990 and 1991. The last time Kerala won Santosh Trophy was in 2004. The current national squad has a lone player from Kerala, C K Vineeth.

Who killed Kerala football and the Malayali football fan? May be KFA’s long–serving president, K M I Mather would know. A seasoned politician and real estate tycoon based in Kochi, 73-year-old Mather is one of the general secretaries of Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee. For more than a decade he has been clinging on to the KFA president’s post. It is a pity that former Union sports minister and Congress leader Ajay Maken’s proposal that all 70-year-old sports body chiefs should quit is ignored by the KFA chieftain.

It is, however, important to note that Federation Cup matches at Manjeri in Malappuram district are drawing crowds to the tune of 25,000. But, then, KFA can take little credit for such a heart-warming turnout. It’s Malappuram’s sevens football culture that is coming to fore, a culture that KFA dreads and tries repeatedly to stamp out.

It is Kerala’s sevens football culture, not KFA’s apparatchiks, that produced legends such as I M Vijayan, C V Pappachan, V P Sathyan, Sharafali and Jo Paul Anchery.

It is quite evident that Mather has his priorities elsewhere. KFA has been successful in its campaign to include Eagles FC in the ongoing Federation Cup. It is strange why All India Football Federation (AIFF) picked Eagles FC, a club that failed to qualify for the six-team final round of the second division league last season. Four teams that are part of the second division league this season --Royal Wahingdoh FC (16pts), Aizwal FC (13pts), Kenkre Sports FC (10 pts), PIFA Sports (6pts) had performed better than Eagles FC which ended up with a mere 5 points in the league in 2012-13. 

Despite repeated email requests and text messages, AIFF spokesperson Nilanjan Datta, usually a loquacious man, refused to come clean on Eagles’s participation but industry sources said Eagles FC was given a ticket to Federation Cup to bring in local supporters since the tournament is being played in Kerala. 

Interestingly, Eagles FC has 13 players on loan from IMG-Reliance, which has a 15-year, Rs 700 crore commercial rights deal with the AIFF, in its roster, after the sudden postponement of the ambitious Indian Super League. A team that is in the tournament ostensibly to add local flavour, however, only fields four Malayali players in its playing XI.

Last Saturday in the 40th Kerala State Football championship held at Wadakkanchery, two-time former Federation Cup winners Kerala Police had defeated Eagles FC to lift the trophy. A few weeks earlier, Eagles FC had gone down to Kerala Police in the semifinal of the 39th edition of Kerala State Football championship held at Meenangadi. It only goes to prove that Eagles FC is not even the best side in Kerala.

And consider this. Which self-respecting football association stages its two annual state championships within a span of weeks? Is this the way to promote the game?

C V Pappachan who was instrumental in Kerala Police winning two  Federation Cups, along with IM Vijayan, says Kerala football is languishing because there are no tournaments for players to show their wares. “We have players but where are the tournaments? Without  tournaments, how our players will improve the game? Who is responsible for running the game in the state,” asks Pappachan. 

Pappachan, a playmaker par excellence, points out that Kerala Police had beaten Eagles FC twice in succession in the 39th and the 40th state championships but KFA did not present the case of the two-time winners to the AIFF. “The reasons are obvious. KFA bosses have pushed for a team in which they have stakes,” says Pappachan.

Pappachan points out how in 1990 when Federation Cup was being staged in Thrissur, there was a qualifying tournament for teams from South India. “Titanium had won a direct entry by virtue of being state champions. Kerala Police played the qualifier, won the spot and won the championship,” said Papapachan. 

That no one cares two hoots for a team propped up by a consortium of political and business tycoons is quite clear by now by the boycott of the tournament by football fans. It explains a lot that one of the promoters of Eagles FC is Mather himself, a flagrant instance of conflict of interest. How can Mather, who is one of the vice-presidents of AIFF, also own a club and push for its inclusion in AIFF tournaments?

With AIFF pumping in Rs 3.5 crore to organize the event and footing the travelling and lodging expenses of the clubs, staging the tournament should have been a cakewalk for KFA, unlike in 1977 when Kochi staged the very first Federation Cup which was an unmitigated financial disaster, according to former KFA secretary K Bodhanandan. 

KFA’s inept organization skills have invited the wrath of all the clubs that are playing in Kochi and Manjeri. In Kochi, all the eight clubs are forced to have practice sessions at the match venue, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, owing to abysmal conditions at the KFA scheduled practice grounds.

Not just that. With three of India’s top clubs jostling for space  during practice sessions simultaneously, half the ground is being taken by Celebrity Cricket League players and officials every day and the venerable KFA leadership has not moved either its left foot or the right one.

In Manjeri, too, the scene is not any different, forcing Dempo SC’s Australian coach Arthur Papas to take to Twitter. One of his tweets read: “I’m left speechless at the incompetence of how football is run in this country, no rhyme or reason to anything.” In turn, his associates have asked Papas whether he is asking his players to have a roll in the sand after practice, poking fun at the third world’s  attempts to run the game.

KFA’s unprofessional attitude is a clear pointer to India’s 154th spot in FIFA rankings. And imagine, the KFA wants to host Under-17 FIFA World Cup in Kochi in 2017!

Not only has KFA failed to offer basic facilities to participating teams but it has been petty and arrogant in not inviting the heroes who delivered Federation Cup twice for Kerala to attend the matches.  It seems KFA prefers to have empty seats around them to the experienced boots who kicked Kerala football in the right direction.

Indian Football: A kick in the right direction?

By John Cheeran

Football fever comes a little early to Kerala in the year of World Cup. The average Indian football fan, who will never make it to Maracana in his lifetime, has an opportunity to trot into stadiums in Kochi and Manjeri to kick themselves in frustration, cheer and jeer footballers, as Federation Cup begins today.

This could be the poor man’s World Cup, with each I-League club having up to four foreign players in their starting XI, most of them hailing from African continent and a few exceptions from England, Australia and Brazil.

The 35th edition of Federation Cup, a tournament that has lost much of its punch and prestige since the National League began in 1997 (later avatar I-League in 2007), brings together 16 top clubs – all the 13 I-League teams and three second division outfits –in a group-cum-knockout format.

It’s the homecoming for Federation Cup. The tournament began in Kochi in 1977. Till then the premier football championship in the country was the inter-state championship for Santosh Trophy and Durand Cup, the longest running football tournament outside of Britain, which began in 1888. Although there were tournaments with the recognition of All India Football Federation (AIFF), there was no premier competition for clubs. When AIFF headquarters was moved from Bombay to Bangalore in 1975 with A T Vijayarangam taking over as president, the stage was set for a new tournament.

A R Khaleel, chairman, I-League, and president of Karnataka Football Association (KFA) told ARRACKISTAN that Federation Cup was the brainchild of Rangam. Khaleel, who was then a member of KFA disciplinary committee, says: “Rangam was more than a great administrator. He was a passionate football fan. The trophy was crafted by a jeweller in Madras of pure silver, costing Rs40,000, a princely sum in those days.”

Federation Cup then was the ultimate prize in Indian club football (the current paycheck for winners is Rs 25 lakh and for runners-up is Rs 15 lakh), an equal opportunity tournament for clubs other than the Kolkata giants of East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting. It was significant that the first final was won by ITI (Indian Telephone Industries) Bangalore, an institutional team that was shut down in 2005 owing to paucity of funds, ending the supremacy of Kolkata clubs. ITI stunned Mohun Bagan 1-0 in the final.

But boots of Kolkata clubs continue to deliver the goals despite such odd defeats. In the last seven editions of Federation Cup –between 2007 and 2012- the champions were either Mohun Bagan or East Bengal, a fact that underscores the vim and vigour of Kolkata league.

All that may change in 2014. With Bengaluru FC, the team floated by JSW Group, making waves in its debut year in the I-League, (the club is leading the I-League charts), the established teams and managements have reasons to rethink their positions and strategies. Managed by former Manchester United youth player and former Blackburn Rovers assistant manager Ashely Westwood, Bengaluru FC could end the Kolkata-Goa duality in Indian football.

Sunil Chhetri, the highest valued Indian player (Rs 1.35 crore earnings a season), and the captain of the national squad, provides the steely resolve to the side. Bengaluru FC has chosen its four foreign players (AIFF allows clubs to play a maximum of four players in the XI) wisely – with two defenders -- former English Premier League player John Johnson, and Kenyan Curtis Osano, and midfielder --Liberian Johnny Menyongar and a striker --Australian Sean Rooney.

The established tradition gets another kick with the emergence of Pune FC as a force to reckon with in Indian football. Formed in 2007 by the Ashok Piramal Group and guided by astute Goan manager Derrick Pereira, Pune FC grabbed second spot up in I-League in 2012-13.

With a new coach at the helm – Dutch Mike Snoei – and led by Kerala defender Anas Edathikode, Pune will raise a strong bid for the championship in Kochi. Pune, too, has a dominant foreign foot with defender Calum Angus (England), midfielder James Meyer (Australian), striker Riga Mustafa (Ghana and Dutch) and midfielder Douhou Pierre (Ivory Coast) in the line-up.

The changing goal post in Indian football is reflected in the current I-League standings. The top four clubs, midway into the season, are all non-Kolkata – Bengaluru FC, Sporting Club de Goa, Pune FC and Meghalayan side Shillong Lajong FC.

A tournament lacks drama without a Group of Death and here it is Group B. Defending champions East Bengal, Bengaluru FC, Sporting Club de Goa, and Meghalayan side Rangdajied United will see close contests with only group toppers qualifying for semi-finals.

The team to watch-out will be the Goan side Salgaocar FC. With Pereira back as coach, they could be the surprise package. In recent history, only Salgaocar have broken the Kolkata stranglehold on Federation Cup (2011).

Not much is expected of Eagles FC, the only Kerala club in the competition. Eagles got the ticket when Langsning FC, Shillong, failed to match Asian Football Confederation’s licensing criteria. The second division club has been accommodated in the tournament in a bid to fill the galleries.

Raleng: a shooting star in Indian football

By John Cheeran
The recently held India’s national football championship for Santosh Trophy was all about a small player. The twenty-year old Manipuri striker Sochungmi Raleng scored 13 goals in the tournament and won the man of the tournament award, but his team, Services, could not bring down the fort of Punjab in the final played in Srinagar.
Services lost by a solitary goal. Punjab, who had 11 players from a professional club called JCT Phagwara, frustrated Raleng and company extremely and won thanks to their no-nonsense approach.
But the point is that Services and Raleng had done enough in the tournament to deserve the attention of Indian football watchers. Services had scored convincing and crushing wins over the eventual champions Punjab, former champions Bengal and Kerala, mainly relying on the goal-poaching abilities of Raleng.
Srinagar may be the end of the road for Services as a football team, but the journey for Raleng, the footballer, has only begun.
And with Indian national team going down to Maldives in the final of the SAFF championship, new thinkers on their feet are most welcome on the maidan.

NP Pradeep: From pauper to Prince of Indian football

By P I Rajeev / Indian Express
KOCHI, AUGUST 30: A bit dazed by all the back-thumping and adulation ever since he landed at the airport here this morning from New Delhi, Naduparambil Pappachen Pradeep is still to come to terms with his overnight stardom in this soccer-crazy state.
It’s been a long journey for Indian soccer’s best defender in recent years, whose one blistering long ranger fetched India the Nehru Cup last night: from a frail school kid who learnt to go without food on occasions when his labourer-parents could find no work, to the tearful 16-year-old who nearly abandoned his soccer dreams because he didn’t have the money to buy a pair of football shoes.
Even his passport application fee had to be paid for by his village football club in Thodupuzha before he put on the India Under-19 colours in 2001. And this ex-captain of India’s under-23 team lives in an unfinished little hut that he had begun constructing with the Rs 28,000 that the local Moolamattom panchayat had given him.
“It was tough, very tough. I really had to struggle to remain with football until the State Bank of Travancore team took me in,” said Pradeep, who now plays for Mahindra United.
“Football is what the poor play, the rich have cricket, and the difference shows” says I M Vijayan, former Indian soccer ace who himself had come up from as poor a background.
Pradeep had played with him for Kerala once in the National Football Championship, before Vijayan retired.
“Take my word, this boy is a great player, a total footballer, probably the best among the country’s younger crop. There aren’t many who can shoot as good as him with both the left and the right,” says Vijayan.
Ironically, Pradeep could not make it to even his college football team while he did his pre-degree at the Kerala Varma College in Thrissur, where Vijayan was his senior. “I dithered. I wasn’t sure if I could really afford to get into football then,” says Pradeep. But things changed after someone spotted the youngster at a youth camp that the Kerala Football Association held in Thodupuzha, and his friends pitched in to help.
As he prepares to fly off to Mumbai tomorrow to join his team, Pradeep has only one regret — that his father, who toiled hard in the village farms to let him chase his dream, is not around.
He died a week before Pradeep was asked to join the national squad’s conditioning camp for the Nehru Cup.
Pradeep says he dedicated his goal last night to his father.