Hard times for Mohammedan Sporting

A DIPPING success chart spells out the misery of Mohammedan Sporting. The Club's glorious reign on the Calcutta `Maidan' now looks like an obscure chapter from mildewed pages of history. It now presents a study in contrast as the club totters with little to talk about success and glory.

Clinging to the past would not in any way resuscitate it from its present predicament. Football like any other game needs sponsors to survive and the dearth of it means a breakdown. And that is what the diagnosis is for Mohammedan Sporting. The solution cannot be easily traced till there is a concerted effort to systematise the functioning. From being the traditional third, it has been nudged to the fourth spot by Manaksia Tollygunge Agragami, which qualified for the National Football League (NFL) in its very first attempt. Sporting has repeatedly failed in its attempts in that respect thus scaring away the prospects of getting good sponsorships. Being an also-ran is never a measure for success. And the realisation has come the hard way for Mohammedan Sporting.

The fallout of such a state are many. The most recent being the exit of renowned players and coach Mohammad Habib. Habib, who came after relinquishing his job with the Tata Football Academy (TFA) as the chief coach in January, found it ``a challenge to work for the club.'' With repeated efforts in the earlier years to find a place in the main leg of NFL falling flat in all its attempts, Habib's presence appeared to instil the zeal among the players despite the numerous handicaps the team had been facing in more areas than one.

The club's efforts to turn a new leaf in the beginning of the millennium proved sour as the NFL qualification still remains a dream.

The resulting frustration seemed to have the officials repeatedly blame the coach, ``starting with the II Division NFL, where we narrowly lost out to Vasco club from Goa, our effort to qualify definitely suffered a setback. But we looked ahead to make a fresh beginning. I had a plan chalked out. But with each passing day, I found the noose of the officials stifling me. I had no option but to come back home,'' said Habib from his home in Hyderabad.

Habib did not spare anyone in his attack. He said except the club secretary, Mir Mohammad Omar, who is a genuine lover of the sport, none in the club administration had much knowledge about the game. ``Each time the team lost, I had to endure severe criticism and tons of advice was heaped on me in the form of coaching tips,'' said Habib adding that such state was beyond his dignity. Contrasted to what he got in TFA, the Sporting experience appeared to be ``a big jolt''.

The exit of Habib thus saw Mohammedan Sporting continuing with its uneasiness and distrust on its coaches. It had been a rare occurrence in the last decade when a coach could complete a season with the club. The restiveness of the team management prodded by a drought of titles, had its victims in the form of the coaches.

The list is long. With Shabbir Ali beginning the decade and continuing the longest, names like Syed Nayeemuddin, Jamshed Nasiri, Mohammad Hakim arrived and departed like months in a calendar. These were the more renowned people in their capacity as coaches. But the team and its financial diffidence gave more scope to the relatively untested ones. The following years thus saw names like Tapanjyoti Mitra, Nirmal Roy, Gautam Sarkar, Mridul Banerjee, Shankar Banerjee, Pungad Kannan and Mohammad Firoze playing their parts in coaching interludes that carried successive seasons for the club. But the mediocrity could not be transcended.

The club last won a major title - which was the Federation Cup triumph for the second successive year - in 1984. And since then it has been a tale of aborted attempts as it lapsed into being the poor third team that could at best be a semifinal loser.

It, however, had some occasional entries in finals but that could only confirm its poor state. It now appears an unattainable glory when one mentions about the five consecutive Calcutta Football League titles that Mohammedan Sporting won between 1934 and 1938.

The club president Mr. Sulaiman Khurshid, who is now running the show in the absence of an indisposed secretary, Mr. Omar, tried to bring together the facts contributing to the club's fall from glory. He felt that the crisis afflicting the club is nothing isolated in a general atmosphere of gloom.

``There has been an universal decline in the standards. None of the teams you see are able to perform to their reputation. If you consider the two big teams in Calcutta, neither Mohun Bagan nor East Bengal can boast of a superlative performance, although these two still represent the best of the football in the country,'' said Mr. Khurshid.

He also felt that the structural imbalance has kept the sport handicapped. ``The increasingly waning popularity of the sport which has seen a sharp fall in the spectators, has a lot to do with the faulty policies of Indian Football Association (IFA). The local body hardly shows the discipline to properly promote the sport. Majority of the Super Division league matches are never broadcast or telecast. Even the fixtures keep fluctuating.''

He went on to add: ``The greatest problem we have faced in the last decade is that of finance. The club membership is ever dwindling. We used to get a lot of members from the beginning of the season but that has all come down alarmingly over the years to leave Sporting gasping for funds.''

He lamented at the performance-sponsorship equation. ``Everything is so much related with performance, in middle of the 80s when Chima Okorie and Jamshed Nasiri took the team to heights of achievement, the club was inundated with memberships but the fall started since then and it is getting increasingly difficult to stem it.''

The other factor leading to the crisis is the fall in the exodus of outstation talents. ``Our team had a tradition of importing players from other parts of India. Places like Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad), Kerala, and Karnataka were the constant sources of supply for our team. The team used to act as the gateway to Calcutta for such players. But in the recent past there has been a vast change in the scenario.

The players from those parts seem to be finding enough patronage for their talents in local clubs,'' he said. Similar is the situation in case of the foreigners - mainly from Middle East and Africa - many of whom were introduced by Mohammedan Sporting. Names like Nigerians Chima and Emeka and Iranians Nasiri and Majid Baskar earned lot of fame playing with the team. ``Apart from that even the local talent pool is also drying up to keep us in short supply of quality players. Whatever little we have in form of good players are drawn away by the lure of big money,'' explained the president.

Habib had no reason to leave as ``we always treated him with respect. As the team suffered repeated setbacks, we only felt he was making certain wrong decisions by using players in unusual positions, and advised him to rectify that. But why that enraged him is not clear. He left on his own and there was no ill treatment from us.''

He had almost a similar reasoning for the earlier incidents. ``Mostly the coaches have left their charges on their own unable to deliver.

As money had been the problem always we had to make do with not- so-renowned coaches. Most of the names in the last decade approached us to give them an opportunity and they went away on their not being able to deliver.''

It is always hard to think that a team of Mohammedan Sporting's stature is being consumed by a diseased system. One of the IFA joint secretaries, Mr. Ranjit Gupta, has promised to play the doctor.

``Mohammedan Sporting is a social club and IFA definitely has its interest and responsibilities regarding its revival. We are working to arrange financial support by way of sponsorship,'' he said.

AMITABHA DAS SHARMA

Calcutta

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