Bringing home the cup

Our young footballers brought home the Subroto Cup, now they are training for the U-17 Asian Football Cup

by ALOK AMATYA

FROM ISSUE # 119 (November 2005) | IN THIS ISSUE
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ANUP PRAKASH

On 13 October, the Nepali U-17 football team won the 45-year-old Subroto Cup, making Nepal the first country to take the Indian trophy away from India. With the U-17 Asian Football Cup qualifying matches just around the corner, this victory has the 27 boys at ANFA Regional Technical Centre, Chyasal, in high spirits.

"I'm sure nobody here expected us to win but we've proved ourselves," says Bikash Chhetri from Biratnagar, who played in last defense in the tournament organised by the Indian Air Force. "In comparison to the average team participating in the Subroto Cup, our performance was superb. The crowd loved us, we were the favourites," says coach Raju Shakya.

The match statistics speak for themselves. In the league stage of the tournament, our boys beat Manipur state team 4-0, Goa state team 6-0, Haryana state team 5-0 and the title defenders from Jharkhand 4-1. Having whizzed through, the confident boys thrashed the Tripura state team 5-0 in the quarterfinals. They were locked with the tough Army Boys in the semi-finals but managed to edge past 1-0. In the finals, they were up against the husky young Punjabs of Chandigarh. "We conceded a goal in the first half due to lack of co-ordination among our defenders," says Rupak Shrestha, the goalkeeper from Jhapa. "But we managed to even the scores with Anil Lama's goal." The coach adds, "We deserved to win in the second half, the boys played brilliantly. But the game went on to extra time, and in the tie breaker, we won 6-5."

Novy Kapadia, Indian football expert, congratulated the Nepali boys and lauded their performance adding, "It's a lesson for India, a much larger nation." Thirty-four teams including those from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka competed for the Cup. Our U-17 boys bagged a purse of IRs 50,000 and the U-14 boys IRs 20,000 as runners-up of the same event. "Playing in an international tournament made us more confident and improved our individual performances," says captain Ranjit Shrestha, who scored 10 goals playing midfield, adding, "We had our chance and we used it well."

Football in Nepal still has a long way to go but this is a start. "We want to play with tough Asian teams such as Korea, Japan and Malaysia. Then we will know where we stand, what we need to improve and how," says the coach.

In the qualifying rounds for the U-17 Asian Football Cup which will take place in Kathmandu on 13, 15 and 17 November, Nepal will face European block teams like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Our boys are training to play fast games with short passes. "Morale is high at the moment because of our team's recent win. But we still want everybody to come, watch the game and cheer us on," says the team captain. So, be there.