Taciturn Houghton & shrewd Ciric were India’s best

The debate on India’s best ever foreign coach gets narrowed down to two widely-travelled Europeans, the taciturn Bob Houghton and the shrewd Milovan Ciric of Serbia. On paper, Houghton has the better record and served India longer, from 2006 till 2011. During his tenure India won the Nehru Cup international tournament, twice at Delhi in 2007 and 2009 and the AFC Challenge Cup in 2008.

The late great Milovan coached India for just two years from 1983 till 1984. India qualified for the 1984 Asian Cup under his management, from a group that included South Korea and Malaysia. In the final rounds in Singapore they held mighty Iran to a goalless draw. His tenure of two years gave the national team a new stature. They played with confidence in the 1984 Nehru Cup against top notch teams like Argentina and Poland.

Milovan is considered the greatest foreign national coach not because of his achievements but in the way he transformed Indian football and provided better facilities for the players. On his birth centenary on February 12, 1988, the internationals of the 1980s from Shabbir Ali to Tarun Dey and Biswajit Bhattacharya unanimously agreed that Milovan was India’s best ever foreign coach.

Shabbir recalls that Milovan was a man of few words but a shrewed observer. He brooked no interference from the mandarins of the All India Football Federation and insisted that the national team players get the best facilities for training and stay. Tarun Dey recalls that at Milovan’s insistence the Indian team stayed in five star hotels on match days or while they were in training camps.

Till the 1982 Asian Games, the Indian probables stayed in army barracks or the air force mess during national camps.

Milovan changed the diet, attitude and facuilities for the national team. He instilled superb national spirit in the team. To prevent dissension he used rotating captains in the 1983 pre-Olympics, played on a home and away basis. The skipper was announced on the morning of the match.

His style of man management was different from contemporary Indian coaches. He had no special treatment for seniors or players from the two big Kolkata clubs. Even his style of match analysis was dissimilar. He neither discussed mistakes nor had a closed door session immediately after the match. He used to have a morning jogging season where everybody discussed about each other’s mistakes. Milovan used to correct all of them in a casual fashion. Prior to one of such jogging session, the late Sudip Chatterjee found the weather cold and put his windcheater on. When everybody was about to start jogging, Milovan shouted, “Hey captain, everybody same, you different”. Sudip realised what he wanted to say and ran into his room, removed the windcheater and joined the group.

Narrating this incident later, Sudip said the message was clear to everyone. Afterwards all the seniors and juniors played as a team and Milovan never found it difficult to insert team spirit. In those days the tradition of wearing same practice kit was not a common practice in India. With this simple illustration, Milovan made it clear that team was above any individual.