Can India have its own Distinctive football style?

by Chittu Shetty August 21, 2016

According to Novy Kapadia, an expert in Indian football, during the 1950-60 era Indian football emphasised more on skill sets, dribbling and short passing moves, hence were considered one of the top teams in Asia. He said, “India had a distinctive style of football and were regarded as ‘Brazil of Asia’ during this period.”

Distinctive identity most of the times comes in terms of national football style, like Holland’s famous ‘Total Football’, Italy’s Catenaccio that focused on fine defending, Spain’s short passes and continuous movement football, also termed as Tiki-Taka. While the English played Long balls, where midfield is bypassed and the ball is directly offered to forwards, the Brazil had its own reliability on individual’s skills with Samba or Ginga. India in its so long football history as failed to establish one. A style that could make crowd gasps in amusement and pull them to stadiums.

Brazil’s Ginga football gave the term ‘Beautiful game’.

Over the years, the game as changed a lot in the country, with dwindling support due to the rise of cricket as a country’s number 1 choice. The game has failed to catch casual spectator’s interest, unlike Cricket. Most of the complaints of present generation football fans regarding Indian football are the lack of quality and also the class in their gameplay. A game against top level teams will consist of putting your body on the line to defend every opposition attacks, while against the easy opponents it mostly is long balls to the forward players hoping that they would do the rest. Also, the team usually depends on certain players more than others. The gap between total goals scored among all the present Indian strikers will answer for that.

While bringing a distinctive style among players when playing occasional football together is difficult, it could be easy, if the young ones are inculcated with it. While the country is currently embroiled in the club franchise merger league issues, a thought on the creating a different style among the younger generations could be of help in future. Brazil’s Legend and Current FC Goa Coach Zico once said, “India is a very big country too and it needs to use its unique diversity to figure out its own style. There is no use in adapting someone else’s style. It has to be a style that you can play too.”

Mohun Bagan’s Diamond style created ripples among Indian Football Fraternity.

It’s not that we never tried, Former India midfielder Amal Dutta (R.I.P), who sadly passed away last month, also regarded as a ‘Diamond Coach’ was the brain behind the emergence of Diamond Formation system- 4-1-2-1-2, in Mohan Bagan that took the club to a different level. Having studied world football, Dutta knew about AC Milan’s success with the diamond system under their legendary manager Arrigo and modified it a little further to applying it on Mohun Bagan players. In a modified formation of 3-2-3-3, Datta’s team created a stir among the Indian football fraternity. The first test of this came at the 1997 Federation Cup. The bold, attacking gameplay resulted in 6-0 demolition of tournament favourites Churchill Brothers in the quarterfinal. Despite the famous 4-1 setback in the derby game against East Bengal, Dutta carried with his Idea and took his team to new heights, even exacting a revenge against rivals within a month, sealing the CFC title. Amal Dutta’s Journey has the coach saw some turbulent time with accusations flying at one another. The Diamond had sparkled for the time it remained, Mohan Bagan would score heavily and display an entertaining form of football. Around October 1998, Dutta was shown the door and so came the end of his Diamond system, failing to reach its true potential.

Like Barcelona’s Tiki-Taka Football wowed the world it emulated to the National style too. Similarly, India has to find it own roadmap to regain the status it once carried around 1950’s. The various age group games of Indian leagues could be used to start this new Indian style of football. Most of the Asian countries like Saudi Arabia, Singapore and even Australia have hired Belgian technical directors to improve their football though youth levels. After all, Belgians are a prime example of how to be a footballing force with their ten-year long football transformation blueprints.

Former Liverpool Coach Gerard Houllier who masterminded the Frances rise in football once during a football conference told that to revolutionise football there are five important ingredients, which are Scouting, State of Art Facilities, Good Specialised Coaches, different age group programmes and a successful professionalism. He said it is important to have a playing philosophy, principals, patience on a daily basis and for five to ten years.

Some day maybe India could have their own style of play that could put them among the best in the world, let’s just hope that day would come within decades and not centuries.