‘PASS AND MOVE, PASS AND MOVE’
The first Asian Games gold in football came in a situation where there were only four participants. The win in 1962 can be considered bigger because of the fact that it had much wider competition (eight teams). We beat sides like Vietnam, Japan and South Korea to win the title, which by any yardstick is no mean achievement. It will always remain one of the biggest milestones in the history of Indian football that a team went to foreign shores to win a continental championship.
We played the same brand of modern football that we see many of the big sides around the world playing today. Our coach Rahim Sahab (Syed Abdul Rahim) would insist on playing passing football while keeping the ball mostly on the ground. “Pass and move, pass and move,” was the motto that our coach tried to instil in us. We followed his words and that got us lot of success in the tournament. I can say that his vision was much ahead of the time and I am reminded of his coaching techniques whenever I see any international match now, especially the way football is played in Europe.
Going back to our performance in Jakarta, I can still remember how our coach inspired us to go for glory. We lost our first match against South Korea (02), but got over the setback quickly beating sides like Thailand (41) and Japan (20) to reach the semifinals, where I scored twice to beat a strong side like South Vietnam 32.
Our team consisted one of best combination of talents including the likes of P. K. (Banerjee), (Tulsidas) Balaram, Arun Ghosh and Jarnail Singh. This side had the spirit and the ability to get past any opposition and that that’s what we did when we beat South Korea 21 in the final in front of a packed stadium. – AS TOLD TO AMITABHA DAS SHARMA
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