Bengal has won just two titles, and played second fiddle to 20-time champions Manipur in Senior National Championship. Their last victory came in 1996-97. KHELUPDATES explore the reasons.
CALCUTTA (India): Bengal football has lost its sheen and shine long time back, and the thin presence of its players both in the national men and women teams cut a sorry state of affairs.
Their men counterpart still have a sizeable presence in all the national teams while Sangita Basfore is the only women player in the senior national team.
“Women’s football in the state has become worse in the last couple of years. The quality has gone down,” said former India captain Shanti Mallick.
Bengal had won the inaugural Senior Women’s National Football Championship in 1991-92 after they overcame Manipur in the final, but could add just one more title in 1996-97 beating their north-eastern opponents.
Since then, it has been Manipur all the way as they dominated like no other state – they won their 20th title last season in Pasighat (Arunachal Pradesh).
The Northeast side is a hotbed of Indian women football, and their players’ unmistakable presence in the senior and age-group national teams only strengthened the belief of their hegemony.
Bengal lacked good players after Kunata, Shanti era
Bengal, who played a second fiddle to Manipur in the competition, are 13-time finalists and threw up several stars Kuntala Ghosh Dastidar, Shukla Dutta, Chaitali Kar, Alpona Sil, Sujata Kar and Indrani Sarkar who were household names during an era when women’s football was slowly gaining ground.
Kuntala and Shukla had featured in the Indian teams that finished runners-up at the 1979 AFC Women’s Championship and came third at 1983 edition in Thailand.
“That was the golden age of Bengal football,” added Mallick. “We grew up watching Gautam Sarkar, Surajit Sen Gupta and Prasun Banerjee. We wanted to be like them. There was a motivation and a dream that helped us pursue football as a career.”
But after their retirement, came a gradual decline as Bengal didn’t really create the next line of players who could replace the Kuntalas, Shuklas and Shantis.
Bengal last won the national title in 2009-10 when they defeated Manipur 2-1 at the 17th Senior Women’s National Football Championship in Neyveli (Tamil Nadu).
Odisha humiliate Bengal in final
Two editions later in Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Odisha thrashed Bengal 5-0 in the final, which turned out to be their only success till date.
In the last nine years, Bengal’s performances and luck dipped as they struggled to lay their hands on the coveted trophy.
“We don’t have great facilities or any coaching programmes for the girls,” said IFA deputy secretary Swapan Dutta, who also looks after the women’s football development.
“AIFF had deputed one instructor Mr Pradip Dutta to develop women football in the state. It didn’t help much but some of our women coaches got motivated and took up coaching licenses. IFA will be keen on hiring a foreign coach in the future,” added Dutta.
Kuntala is hopeful
But Kuntala, who started playing football with the boys at her neighborhood Vivekananda Park, sees a ray of hope of Bengal reviving their lost glory.
“Bengal football is going through a transition. It’ll take another five years to overcome this bad patch as a lot of our footballers from the districts are now playing in Calcutta clubs,” said Kuntala, who has been a pioneer and inspiration for women’s football in India.
“I’ve selected 85 players from Bankura, Purulia, Nadia, Jalpaiguri and South 24 Paragans. But there’s a lack of direction and absence of quality licensed coaches.”
“We don’t have quality coaches. The IFA must introduce some modern coaches’ programme. Only then we could get some results,” explained Kuntala.
But another former international Indrani felt that the attitude in the modern generation of players have not helped much.
“Earlier, the girls were married off by their families. This was one of the biggest problems as to why we lost some good players. But the current crop of player wants to focus on landing a secured job,” said Indrani, who had coached the East Bengal’s age-group teams from 2009 to 2010.
