Goa’s reputation gone

Shameful scenes that unfolded after the ISL-2 final were a blot on the tournament. Unable to stomach the defeat,FC Goa went on an utterly inexplicable wild goose chase to find a scapegoat

The Indian Super League final between FC Goa and Chennaiyin FC on Sunday had all the enchanting elements to transform haters of football into lovers of the beautiful game. The match, which witnessed three goals in three climactic minutes as Chennaiyin pulled off a dramatic 3-2 win, was a great advertisement for the ISL.

The shameful scenes that unfolded after the final were, however, a blot on the tournament. Unable to stomach the defeat, FC Goa went on an utterly inexplicable wild goose chase to find a scapegoat. It is the bane of Indian football that its two forward steps are always followed by four backward steps. FC Goa’s co-owner Dattaraj Salgaocar did a great disservice to the game by lodging a police complaint against Elano, alleging that the Chennaiyin’s marquee player had hit him. An overzealous Goa police arrested the former Brazilian international.

Instead of celebrating the famous win with his team-mates, Elano had to endure a harrowing time in a police station on Sunday. Salgaocar committed the cardinal mistake of taking a football fight outside the ground, dealing a debilitating blow to the image of Indian football in the process. Elano is not a paragon of virtue but the treatment FC Goa meted out to him was below the belt. Never in his wildest imagination would he have envisaged a two-hour stay in a dinghy police station in Goa during his Indian sojourn. The ISL management should appoint the FC Goa co-owner as brand ambassador for a venture to bring famous foreign players to Indian shores for Season Three.

Another cringe-worthy aspect was the way Japanese referee Yudai Yamamoto was intimidated after the final. After dishing out a fine performance that allowed the match to flow, the referee had to face all sort of verbal and physical abuses from the irate Goa camp.

Even during the match, the Japanese came within a whisker of being head butted by Goa defender Gregory Arnolin. Yamamoto could earlier have sent off Goa goalkeeper Laxmikant Kattimani for pushing Stiven Mendoza.

He was lenient with both teams in issuing red cards but his generosity didn’t have an impact on the result. It was Mendoza who tormented Goa as he had a hand in all the three goals of his team besides winning a penalty that he went on to waste.

Instead of admitting their failure to contain the Colombian, the hosts turned their ire on the hapless referee and Elano. The pinnacle of Goa’s crass acts was boycotting the presentation ceremony. Even the team’s coach Zico has expressed his displeasure at giving the function a miss.

The champions flatly refused to answer questions on Elano’s culpability for his arrest upon their return to Chennai. May be a clarification from the horse’s mouth would have put the incident in perspective. Salgaocar had also indirectly accused the ISL management of fixing the result of the final. He hadn’t presented hard evidence to support his charge. The ISL should treat Salgaocar’s allegation as a wake-up call.

They should clear lingering doubts about ownership details because they hand-picked franchises instead of selecting them through competitive bidding. M.S. Dhoni is called a co-owner of Chennaiyin. Why can’t his stake in the club be made public if there is nothing to hide It appears that the first unwritten rule of sports leagues in India is to shroud ownership in mystery. Apart from the fact that all franchises are incurring huge losses every season, the lack of public enthusiasm for teams in Delhi and Pune have also cast a shadow on the ISL.

It’s time the management of the ISL became more transparent instead of expecting everyone to remain in awe of the show they put up every year. The ISL isn’t a circus.