Indian football gets hot in winter

In a month when footballers and officials had to stage a protest march against the official electronic media for refusing to cover India's international matches, the graph of the game in India has shown a dramatic upward movement.
Things had never been so good for Indian football in recent years, be it at the club level or for the national team. While the national team notched up a rather unexpected victory over Singapore, ranked 30 places higher in the FIFA rankings, in the pre-World Cup, club teams --- East Bengal and Mahindra United --- scored convincing wins over teams from Malaysia, Oman and Singapore in the AFC Cup.
Four international victories in a month is rare in Indian football and surely, there are reasons to feel that the 'sleeping giant' of Asian soccer is finally waking.
Indian skipper Bhaichung Bhutia, who played in three of the four matches, agreed that it could well be a transition period for Indian football. "Our players no longer shy away from facing better opponents," he said. "They have grown in confidence and are capable of delivering the goods in tough encounters."
Two coaches, Stephen Constantine of the national team and Subhas Bhowmick of East Bengal, agreed with Bhutia's observations.
While February remains the focal point of this transition, a closer look shows that the actual transition period started from the year 2000, when the Indian team performed creditably in a host of international tournaments, starting from the Asia Cup qualifiers. With a new crop of players like Deepak Mondal, Mahesh Gawli, Debjit Ghosh, Renedy Singh, Venkatesh and Bhutia himself coming in, India won the LG Cup and did reasonably well in the World Cup qualifiers, Asian Games and Afro-Asian Games.
It would definitely have been even better had the federation given the team more international exposure rather than concentrating on domestic tournaments.
Now the question is whether this feel good factor in Indian football is real or just a hyped-up mirage?
AIFF secretary, Alberto Colaco took a cautious approach and jokingly said: "Let's wait and see for some more time. Indian football can take you to heaven and pull you back to earth within a minute. But at the same time, it's good to see our footballers playing on equal terms against superior opponents. That's probably the best thing to happen to Indian football in recent months."
Former national coach Sukhwinder Singh is happy to see teams doing well, but there's a rider here too. "Things are moving in the right direction but I would like to follow a wait and see policy for another couple of months. Let India play against Oman and Japan in the World Cup qualifiers. Then we will know where we stand."

*********************

Having a ball
Winter's tale
Pre-World Cup - Feb 18, Goa: India bt Singapore 1-0 (Renedy Singh).
AFC Cup - Feb 10, Singapore: East Bengal beat Geylang (Singapore) 3-2 (Cristiano Junior, 2, Bijen Singh). Feb 11, Goa: Mahindra United beat Dhofar (Oman) 2-1 (Venkatesh, Abhishek Yadav). Feb 26, Kolkata: East Bengal beat Negri Sembilan 4-2 (Mike Okoro, Cristiano Junior, 2, Bhaichung Bhutia).

Matches to come
** Pre-World Cup: Mar 31: India v Oman (Kochi); June 9: India v Japan (Jap); Sep 8: India v Japan (Kolkata); Oct 13: Singapore v India (Sing); Nov 17: Oman v India (Oman).
** AFC Cup: Apr 7: Mahindra v Al Wahada (Syr) in Goa, East Bengal vs Island (Mald) in Maldives; Apr 21: Mahindra v Al Wahada in Damascus, East Bengal v Island in Kol; May 5: Mahindra vs Dhofar in Muscat, East Bengal vs Gaylang in Sing; May 18: East Bengal vs Negri Sembilan in Malaysia