A Class Act Forever

Returning home after having spent the entire day playing football I thought I should pen this event in my Blog. The year 2005 was rollercoaster ride for me as an ICICI pru captain; I was unable to pull off any wins that year. But last month I silenced all the critics by bringing home the Runners up trophy at the Barclays Cup, one of the prestigious events in the city. Though we were not the winners but the runners up title was enough to regain the disappointed team members. Definitely my team members were the stars behind this win.

I never expected to come this far with a team where only 3 members were experienced soccer players. But today’s victory is much sweeter for a quiet a few reasons, we were not only second in the Champions Cup but I scored my first official goal as a ICICI Pru captain and this is also a first back – to – back win making me the only captain to achieve this in ICICI Pru..

For this tournament I had my squad decided and made few alterations. The time we reached the venue and preparing ourselves for the first battle I said to Jason “pls be lenient to the opponents and don’t score too many goals”. This was just to cheer my team and build the confidence because I believe “if we play the way we are capable of, we are going to win”. But Jason did exactly opposite of what I had said and we thrashed the opponents with 7-0 win. Later in the second game our key player (‘Salvito’) was missing as he had some official call and I was left out with 5 players and no one to rotate, but again this was our baby and we beat the opponents by 3-0. By the time we were gearing up for the quarter finals news came in ‘Salvito’ is on his way back, that put me in a relax mode. From now on the real test starts, the Fedex were in good form and they striked us with their first goal in first few minutes of the game, that means demoralization of the team. And the quarrel between Jason and the opponent made me wilder and we had to do something to put our team back on track. No sooner we got a free kick and Jason pass the ball to me and I kicked it with all my might and banged in the goal like a bullet. With this goal our team was back in the game. Later in the second half just after the kick off FedEx score one more goal and were leading but Jason was smart enough for not allowing the opponents to enjoy their success for a minute and gave a reply with a classic goal.

Then came the penultimate moment, Sal had opted that he will keep in the goal and he was the savior and the hero of this game as he saved all the 3 penalties and also scored one putting us into semifinals. Once more we clawed our way towards the victory and now face the undefeated Mid-Day team.

I knew this is our game coz I could see all the other teams in my rear view mirror. Semifinals were a Childs play for us winning with 3-0 goals. Now comes the final hour we had to face a very difficult team “Intelenet” but we were confident and had our strategy in place, but failed to make our mark in the finals and lost by 3-0.

But our spirits were high and did not loose our confidence, we played like true heroes and definitely for us the hero was ‘Nishanth’ who for the first time keeping in the goal and what a fantastic goal keeper I must say. With the combination of patience, intelligence and skills in this game we made it this far.
If in one sentence I had to say it would be “ we all scored a goal in this event”

“Losing doesn’t make u a loser unless you think u r a loser”