Since football runs in the blood of every Goan, it hurts to see how a series of very unfortunate events grounded our Gaurs till the evening of January 3, for a game in Kolkata barely scheduled to start two hours away.
Irrespective of what the final result turned out to be, no football team, let alone a top side playing the nation’s most prestigious tournament should have to face the prospect of landing and literally racing to the stadium and getting on to the pitch with no time even for a warm up.
While the absolutely unavoidable set of circumstances, the technical hitch of their charter plane which was supposed to leave on January 2, followed by the crash of a MIG 29 air craft on the Dabolim airport tarmac which delayed their departure on game day morning, it is part for the course to ask if the team could have left on January 1 with two clear days, as they normally do. It will perhaps come up in the review and internal post mortem if, after their chartered plane came back to Goa, the team could have flown commercial via Mumbai on 3rd early morning.
But we must also understand that FC Goa was hampered with a last minute change of their Kolkata schedule. Their match against ATK was postponed from December 31 to January 3. This kind of a scheduled change for a Goa related travel of an entire football squad during the peak travel time of the new-year returning crowd from Goa, is a logistical nightmare. Could FC Goa have done it better? Could they have travelled earlier and practiced in Kolkata instead of Goa?
With less than sufficient insight at the time of writing this, on what went on in the run up to this game, it will be unfair to come to conclusions but it’s fair to expect clarity on this at some stage. This is because the connect the people of Goa have with their team is emotional. And this support goes beyond home matches. Every aspect of the team, its players and their well being is an issue of concern and discussion. Which is why FC Goa is not a team, it’s a sentiment.
Having said this, there is a strong case for the ISL governing body to have taken into account extreme and unfortunate circumstances like the ones FC Goa went through on January 3 and postponed the game by a day or rescheduled it totally. Firstly, this league is spread out with teams getting more days to recuperate. Yet our FC Goa has been left with the prospect of playing three back to back games in eight days.
Taking into account the fact that the team was on a flight which developed a technical snag and then a totally unrelated accident at Goa, delayed their take off the next day, the ISL governing body should have taken the clarion all to postpone the game. After all this is a game and the spirit of sport should linger and prevail as much in the corridors of management of football leagues as on the pitch.
Bad travel luck can hit any team, but that shouldn’t result in players having to air dash across the country to land an hour before kick-off and rush to the stadium. These are players and no team can risk mass injury in situations like this.
The ISL needs to learn lessons from this and perhaps FC Goa too. Risking grave injuries to players is simply not a risk worth taking.
