Prasun Banerjee

Saturday, 20. June 2009 - Pit Ruddy

Our Pit Ruddy caught up with former Indian international Prasun Banerjee, who in the recently held Santosh Trophy, had been the West Bengal manager.

As a player he tasted success to the maximum. Prasun Banerjee led the victorious Bengal team in 1979.That year Bengal won the Santosh Trophy for the fifth consecutive year, a feat they have achieved twice in their total victory count of 29 times. In 1991 he returned to the Bengal fold as a coach, but his team crashed out in the semifinals. Nineteen years later Prasun was back in the mainstream, this time as a manager. Bengal reached the finals but the ultimate goal of retrieving the Santosh Trophy remained unfulfilled. It has been 10 years since Bengal last won the Santosh Trophy.
What ails the state’s football? IndianFootball.Com’s Pit Ruddy caught up with Prasun Banerjee to find the answer and the reasons behind the continuous debacle.


Pit Ruddy: Bengal failed once again. What is the actual reason for this?

Prasun: The biggest reason is that the difference in player’s quality has hugely reduced.
During our time if Bengal was 10 Goa would have been 6. Now Bengal is 9 and Goa 10. In our times we had huge match-winners. So even on a very bad day for the team you would find a Shyam Thapa netting the match winner. Today’s boys are professional, disciplined, dedicated, and very obedient. But talentwise they are mediocre. Ultimately that is creating the difference.


Pit Ruddy: Were you sceptical from the beginning?

Prasun: I have always been a positive person. When the final team was selected the media predicted Bengal has no chance. When in the first match we equalized in the 94th minute against Tamil Nadu people called and said you have no chance. Before we faced Services in the semifinal once again people reminded me that last time we had lost to them 4-1. Inspite of such negative talks I reminded the boys about the positive aspect. I told them, remember Bengal has won the Santosh Trophy 29 times, so why not make it 30! The ultimate result has let all of us down, so no point in shouting loud and trying to prove a point.


Pit Ruddy: What was your job role?

Prasun: You can say I was the peace maker. I was a governing body member of the IFA (West Bengal) .Once given the responsibility of looking into Bengal’s Santosh Trophy venture my first objective was to ensure that the team got enough time to prepare. For the last few years I was observing that the team would fly of to play only after practicing for 5-7 days. I spoke to the AIFF secretary Alberto Colaco in February and he predicted that the Santosh Trophy would be held sometime around June. We started preliminary our camp on April 18. The coaching responsibility was given to Raghu Nandi. He had been successful at the Under-19 and Under-21 level. Initially there was resistance about Raghu but my logic was that lot of big names had been tried it in the last few years but they had failed, so why not a new face! After discussing with Raghu we decided that unwilling horses will not be accommodated. So this time you saw a lot of youngsters and not the stars. We were careful in selection and so no controversy arose. We picked Lalam Puia and Denson Devadas after their respective states had discarded them. One the whole, the final team looked fullproof.


Pit Ruddy: What was your experience with the present generation footballers?

Prasun: Initially there was reservation on their part. That was quite natural, these boys had not seen me play, never had a chance to interact, saw me on television and newspapers. I took the initiative, I had to take it. I had read in Beckenbauer’s various write-ups how he would informally interact with footballers to go deep in their mind. I started the exercise when we reached Chennai. 30 minutes before dinner I used to invite the entire team to my room and would give them the liberty to freak out. It slowly started to work and ultimately developed into a fantastic team spirit building exercise. In that meeting I would very casually tell the boys stories from Mohammed Ali’s life, how he would prepare to wipe out the opponent. It helped to slowly build the killer instinct in the boys. They also realized that I sincerely wanted them to succeed. I also learnt a lot about the coach Raghu. He doesn’t have a coaching degree but he is very equipped about the work.


Pit Ruddy: But even after all this effort the result was nil?

Prasun: Can’t help it. That we reached finals was a great effort. Ultimately difference in quality, lack of genuine match-winners had to prevail. I am really very disappointed. I believe the disappointment in me overshadows the one when as a player wearing Mohun Bagan jersey I lost to East Bengal 5-0.