Men behind the Blueprint of Bengaluru's success
CHENNAI: That night in Bengaluru’ was still 20 days away, but something inside Mustafa Ghouse saw it coming. The Bengaluru FC COO had just landed in Malaysia for the first leg of his club’s AFC Cup semifinal against defending champions Johor Darul Ta’zim. Ghouse had landed on the day of the game, but the team had been camping in Malaysia for a few days, preferring to fly in directly after their quarterfinal win against Tampine Rovers.
This was far from BFC’s first visit to Malaysia — the Blues had run into Johor multiple times during their two years in the continent, losing every single time they played at the Larkin Stadium. But Ghouse knew something was different.
“I could tell something was different this time,” he says. “There was no tension, no nervousness nor any sign that they were over-awed by the situation. It was like they believed that they were going to be in the final.” Bengaluru drew that game 1-1 and then went on to beat Johor 3-1 at home. Ghouse, a former Davis Cupper, was one of the first people to know of Bengaluru’s impending birth.
“I remember that call from Mr Jindal’s office telling me that this is something we would be keen to look at,” he says. “Right from the start, there was always an intent to do something for Indian football. We were keen to take up this opportunity.”
With eventual coach Ashley Westwood still some time away from joining, it was left to Ghouse and current chief technical officer Mandar Tamhane to start assembling the squad that would eventually finish the season as champions. But Ghouse had an ace up his sleeve.
“I think Sunil (Chhetri) was one of the first people to come onboard. It wasn’t easy and Sunil was not going to join a new entity just because of the Jindal name. I met with him half a dozen times and Mandar did too. Eventually, we had our captain.” But more than capturing the India captain before they had even played a game, Ghouse and Co were making waves because of how they did business.
At a time when a number of I-League clubs were still writing out the contract on paper napkins, Bengaluru was sending out detailed contracts.
“I have heard the stories (of contracts on paper napkins) as well,” Ghouse laughs. “A lot of people were taken aback when we started sending them 18-page contracts. Everyone had this fixed idea of how a football club needed to be run. There were a lot of notions that needed to be changed.” On that night in Bengaluru, Ghouse could afford to pat himself on the back. Everyone at BFC had done what they set out to do.
Their Asian Champions League qualifier against Johor was in its dying embers and Bengaluru was trailing by a goal. The Blues though had a corner and Eugeneson Lyngdoh stepped up. The likes of Sunil, Robin Singh and CK Vineeth were waiting in the middle, but Eugene chose to swing it towards the far post. Johor keeper Farizal Marlias came out to collect, but the ball suddenly gained a life of its own and changed trajectory, curving inwards towards the goal.
The net rustled as a hushed silence descended over the Larkin Stadium. In the stands, Alwin Lawrence was a few inches of the ground in celebration. Lawrence usually doesn’t celebrate. One of his many tasks is to watch the game, watch it again until he spots patterns amidst the unholy mess that a football game usually is.
What a player tends to do when he finds himself down the flanks with the ball at his feet, how a team tends to behave in the 70th minute of a game when they are a goal down. The night before the Johor game, Lawrence had pointed out to then coach Westwood that Marlias had a tendency to come out rashly for corners. Eugene was made privy to the information. And as he stepped forth to take the kick, the Shillong lad knew where to put the ball.
“You feel part of that, you know? When something you picked out happens,” Lawrence says. His story is a vital sub-plot of the Blues narrative, one that is key to understanding why the club has tasted success.
At Bengaluru, they call him a performance analyst. “We keep a tab on all players, the way everyone contributed, how many minutes they have played, the number of assists and goals, the yellow cards, the red cards,” Lawrence says. “Not just for our team, but for the entire league. I have got an entire Excel book full of statistics. “It’s more or less a Moneyball approach,” he says. “We’ve been signing the unknowns or the quieter ones.”
And the reward for all this? “When I ran into Eugene after that goal, he gave me a smile and a high five,” Lawrence says. The Shillong midfielder may not have said it out aloud, but his actions said it all. Great assist, mate! *** Every successful football coach has had a man Friday, someone who is more a partner in crime than an assistant.
Matt Busby had Jimmy Murphy, Brian Clough had Peter Taylor, Jose Mourinho has Rui Faria, the list goes on. For BFC manager Albert Roca, that man is fellow Spaniard Carles Cuadrat. When Cuadrat agreed to link up with Roca, more than six years ago, in Turkey, he must have had no idea what was in store for him. His journey together with Roca has taken him through Saudi Arabia and El Salvador. Now the duo finds themselves in India. “We knew very little about Indian football, to be honest,” Cuadrat says.
“I had been here for a while just when I had finished my career as a professional footballer. India is exotic in the eyes of a Spanish citizen. In addition, it is a country that does not go through great conflict or violence. After our experience in El Salvador, with a high index of daily crimes, that was something to take into account.”
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com