In the end FC Goa wasn’t beaten by a better team. It was beaten by Stiven ‘Houdini’ Mendoza. We call him Houdini because he has the ability to slip through the defence, any defence and score at will. He tricked Kattimani twice to earn two penalties for Chennaiyin FC. He was instrumental in forcing the goalkeeper to commit an error which led to an own-goal, and sank Goa’s hopes when he nudged the ball into the net in the dying minutes of the game, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In two minutes Goa went from sure victors to losers. The final score left fans stunned. The silence was deafening. Then something worse happened and at the end of it the captain of the winning team, Elano Blumer, a celebrated international footballer who played for Brazil, found himself in the Margao police station where he was placed under arrest. The FC Goa team refused to come out for the prize distribution ceremony, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and his entourage left the stadium and so did most of the fans and the concluding ceremony was conducted in the middle in the field of an empty stadium.
On Sunday night, football, the beautiful game, lost because everybody connected with FC Goa lost their heads. It apparently started with a scuffle between Elano and Dattaraj Salgaocar, co-owner of FC Goa. Salgaocar filed a police complaint stating that he was abused and elbowed by Elano. When you get on to the pitch after a match that was so tightly fought and with tempers raging on both sides, something is bound to happen. Players put up with more serious injuries. Yes, we are all disappointed with the final result, but also ashamed that the captain of the winning team was arrested. It is a blot on the fair name of Goa.
The decision to file a police complaint was a personal decision made by Salgaocar and it was his to make. But it might be interesting to note how Sharad Pawar handled a similar incident. It might be recalled that in 2006 after the Australian cricket team was presented the Champions trophy in Mumbai, Sharad Pawar was pushed off the podium by Damien Martyn. Like the shrewd politician that he is, Pawar did nothing. He let Sachin Tendulkar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sunil Gavaskar and Mohammed Azharuddin do the censuring and waited for the apology to come. And when Ricky Pointing offered the apology he gracefully accepted it. That was how Pawar prevented a bad situation from getting worse.
The unsavory incident on Sunday could have been better handled, but sometimes in the heat of the moment passion overrules reason with disastrous consequences. Even after Sunday, one cannot question the commitment, sacrifice and passion that the owners of FC Goa bring to the game. They have supported football for the last five or six decades. They have spent money literally without thinking of tomorrow and they are credited with bringing the game to new level. But they have to sit down and do a re-think on the final match. Mistakes happen and they can be resolved. And the sooner this is done the better.
