Sometimes as we all move on in life, we tend to forget about the simpler things. Even when you have everything you can wish for small things like the feel of soft grass under your feet, or the warm rays of the morning sun can bring great joy.
Similarly, a football season can be a hectic affair, both for coaches and for the players. During the course of a season, they all tend to complicate certain things that could actually be solved quite easily. However, Indian Arrows head coach Floyd Pinto can say with an amount of certainty that his boys, support staff and he have learnt it the hard way.
Indian Arrows – All India Football Federation’s (AIFF) developmental team which consists mostly of the boys that turned out for India in the FIFA U-17 World Cup in the country two years back – was a project as per Pinto, which was resumed last season, in order to give the GenNext of bright footballers a chance to play regularly in the top flight. They could go to other clubs surely, and try to work their way up through the structures. But with so many seniors, and foreign recruits in the squad, it is often natural for coaches to overlook the ones who are not as experienced in the top level.
A Shaky Beginning
Arrows didn’t had the best of the starts. They finished bottom of the pile last season. This season too, the start was somewhere similar — winning one win (against Shillong Lajong FC) in their first seven matches. Pinto joined the Arrows setup since it was revamped last season, first as an assistant coach to Luis Norton de Matos and now as the head coach. “It is all about assessing what you have done. Back when I was the assistant coach, I would always take some time to take a step back and think about what I could do differently. I do exactly the same thing now as well,” Pinto said.
“This is why, when we had a 10-day gap in the I-League, the coaching staff, including Hameed (goalkeeper coach), Mahesh Gawli (assistant coach) and myself sat down with the boys for a long chat. What you have to understand is that we had some rigorous pre-season tours in Spain (Cotif Cup), Serbia and Croatia. But the fact is that the quality of teams that we faced there was so high that we did not have many opportunities to experiment.”
The discussion with the boys helped not just the boys but the coaches too. “We all decided to try and play a more attacking brand of football,” the Mumbaikar explained. And the experiment worked. Arrows got off to a good start and took the lead against Chennai City FC in the first match of the season, through they has to swallow four from the players who eventually are the champions of India.
Regaining Control
Mahesh worked on keeping the shape of the team, and Pinto worked on how to turn defence into attack. However, Pinto understood that these little things help you achieve your goals. He started to work with the boys on the basics like what kind of touch to take in different scenarios and this combined effort worked. Moreover, it worked so well that 11 of these guys – some of them as young as 16 – got selected for the India U-23 camp which speaks a lot about how much they have improved over the course of the season.
Setting an Example
One has to definitely agree that these young arrows team have definitely set an example for the other teams in the country be it in the I-League or the Indian Super League. They have showed that young Indian players can be of good effect if given proper coaching, facilities and education.
Older players will bring in their own brand of experience in clutch situations, but football is an ever-evolving game, and youngsters generally have a greater capacity to absorb information, and learn new stuff.
It was evident in the Arrows’ game that they never allowed anyone sit and relax. They may have lost or conceded but they always dictated the games with their pace, skills and dedication.
Towards the end of the I-League 2018-19 season, these young boys defeated former champions Minerva Punjab at home, drew with teams like Real Kashmir and Gokulam Kerala FC and last but not the least humbled Kolkata giants and former champions Mohun Bagan at their home to finish the season. All these results speaks a lot about this team.
The guys proved that they are one of the fittest teams in the country. Not many clubs can match their intensity for 90 minutes and beyond.
According to Pinto, “Of course, it’s a more professionalised setup here at the Arrows as we are playing in the top flight, but developing youngsters and making them ready for the big, bad world out there is something that I have always been doing.”
The current Arrows crop is a bunch of extremely talented players with a lot of potential. However, we have often seen good potential getting wasted due to certain wrong decisions in their lives.
The players may decide to join different clubs in the future, but at the end of the day, they need to work things out in their head and go to setups where they will be around people who will help them improve – coaches, management, agents.
The boys have been given the right amount of coaching and education by their seniors at the backend but it is them who would go on to make the beautiful game more attractive.