If there is one aspect in which the FC Goa team has been consistent in for the past three seasons of the Indian Super League, it is in surprising its fans and the football-loving people of the State and the country. At the halfway mark in seasons one and two it was at the bottom of the league and then scrambled to make it to the semifinals of both seasons, eventually becoming the runner up in season two, after losing a match it had been winning until injury time of the second half. In season three, where the halfway mark has already been crossed it is still at the bottom of the table – sharing points with two other teams – but at the bottom because of a goal difference that is not in its favour, albeit by a very large margin.
As it struggled on the field and off it, the team was almost written off this season as it has failed to score and pundits of the game thought it didn’t any longer have the will to win. And FC Goa surprised them yet again.
The surprise came in the last home match that the team won – only the third match it has won this season of the ten it has played – and the first at home after losing three prior to this. It was a match few expected the team to win. It was recovering from a scrappy affair in Kerala where two of its players were red carded and so were missing the game, and on match day learnt that two more players were suspended. The team took the field with nine Indian players, five of them Goan. The first half was goalless and FC Goa was down 1 goal in the second half when Robin Singh scored the equaliser. A few minutes later a FC Goa player Sahil Tavora was shown the red card for his second foul of the match and marched off the field. Down to ten men, Romeo Fernandes, who had come out shining in season one came to the team’s rescue in the fourth minute of injury time and scored the winning goal. FC Goa, with 10 points has bought itself a new life and is suddenly not a team that can be written off from the league yet.
The forced experimentation with nine Indian players paid off, but is this a winning combination or was it a motivated team after the suspensions of its colleagues that got onto the field and decided to prove that it can perform under pressure? With all the suspensions, Coach Zico will have to now dig deep into the reserves of the team to field a team in the coming matches, but the win has shown that its bench strength is not to be sneezed at and can be a winner in a crunch situation.
What’s heartening is the resilience that the team has displayed in the last contest, which it now has to match in the coming games if it is to go on to make it to the semis as it did in the last two seasons. A tough ask at this stage especially with so many players facing suspensions, but if it can shrug off the losses of the past games and concentrate on what lies ahead, it can perhaps make it to the last four, and from there it is then anybody’s game.
While the team regroups, the Indian Super League organisers need to look into is the allegations that the FC Goa team is at the receiving end of bad refereeing decisions. The team may not have played the best of football, but its fans still love it and stand by it. Any victimisation, whether on purpose or inadvertently, is not what the beautiful game is all about. If it is to be kept beautiful, then the organisers should give no cause for complaint. Before the referee blows the final whistle on the league, whatever the progress of FC Goa, the allegations should end.
