CHENNAI: They say opposites attract and likes repel. Perhaps that is why Chennaiyin FC’s most heated rivals for the first three seasons weren’t next-door Kerala Blasters or regular title rivals Atletico de Kolkata. That dubious honour went to FC Goa, a club that had a lot in common with CFC until the start of this season.
For starters, both of them retained the same coach for three years, volatile ones at that too. There was always a buzz when Zico and Marco Materazzi went head to head.
Their big personalities with conflicting ideologies and acid tongues contributing to it. Their first meeting saw Materazzi keep eight men behind the ball all the time to counter a free-flowing Goa. Their most notorious one, the final of ISL-2, ended with Elano being arrested.
But in ISL’s fourth season, both have moved on, in drastically different directions. Chennayin are now helmed by Englishman John Gregory while Goa have gone for a Barcelona alumni in Sergio Lobera, the latter promptly stamping his seal by signing six players from his home country. Materazzi and Zico are gone.
In a league, where teams with no lore of their own often borrow from their coaches and marquee stars, will the rivalry survive? Lobera, for one, doesn’t care. “To compare two players is very difficult, to compare two coaches is even more difficult. To compare two different teams, with two different coaches, there is no comparison,” he said on the eve of the game on Saturday. “I think the past is the past, the present is today and future is what will come.”
In terms of an uneventful pre-season — there is perhaps no better yardstick to gauge their prospects for most foreign players on both sides are unknown quantities — Lobera’s team will be the more favoured one. Chennaiyin shifted base due to bad weather, lost four of their main Indian stars to the national squad and haven’t trained on their home pitch.
It is telling that Gregory was still talking about his stop-start pre-season a day before the match. “Unfortunately, we had four players away for three weeks (on national duty), which disrupted our plans. Jerry, Jeje, Germanpreet, they haven’t had rest and have been playing continuously,” he said. Germanpreet will likely sit out the game due to a knock sustained while on national duty. But Gregory knows the importance of winning a home clash, especially when you’re Chennaiyin. During the two good seasons under Materazzi, the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was a fortress.
A run of home wins memorably propelled them from bottom dwellers to champions in 2015. “You are expected to win home games,” he said. “If you can pick up points when you are on the road and win home games, you always have a chance at the title.”
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com
Other match: Bengaluru FC vs Mumbai City FC @ Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru. Live on Star Sports 2 @ 8 pm.
Saturday result: NorthEast United 0-0 Jamshedpur FC.