BANGALORE: It was the same two teams, Dempo, Goa, and Mohun Bagan, Kolkata, which clashed in the tragic Federation Cup final on Dec 5, 2004 in Bangalore at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. It is the same two teams which line-up again for the same silverware which the Goans won for the first time after their Brazilian striker Cristiano Junior had scored two goals. But their first-ever triumph was overshadowed by the shocking death of Junior even as he was about to celebrate his second strike. A massive cardiac arrest second after the ball had entered the net past the then goalkeeper Subrata Pal, now thankfully in the East Bengal ranks, who had in fact struck the Brazilian rather needlessly before he had collapsed in a heap never to rise again.
Junior had been the top-scorer for East Bengal the previous season. Dempo had signed him on and he did not disappoint them either scoring in virtually every game and made the Fed Cup final his own till that tragic moment when fate snatched a footballer in the midst of a football game in which he had provided immense joy to the packed stadium and to millions of television viewers in the country.
Having been at the mike covering the match for Doordarshan, repeated slow-motion replays of those agonising moments as the game was stopped come right before the mind’s eye. One can never-ever forget those heart-breaking moments. It had happened during the Santosh Trophy in Kannur in 1994 when Sanjib Das, the Railway stopper, had died of caridac arrest on the field. It almost happened during the Santosh Trophy in 1997 in Jabalpur when Services stopper Ignatius fell unconscious as a result of clash but then recovered soon enough in hospital. That wasn’t to be in Junior’s case. For as the post-mortem report said later, it was a massive cardiac arrest and he died within seconds of falling down to the ground.
The most poignant memory of that fateful event is that of Dempo striker Ranty Martins. The Nigerian, who continues to be Dempo’s main striker and who himself lost consciousness after a clash in the semifinal against Churchill on Dec 18, was the first to reach a fallen Junior. He touched him and perhaps immediately realised that something was terribly wrong. Ranty gestured for the medical personnel to rush in. Even as they did, Ranty knelt beside Junior, folded his hands and looked heaven-wards in prayer. Ranty was asking the Almighty to save Junior. Rather tragically, that did could not happen as Junior had probably breathed his last by then.
It’s four years since that tragedy occured on the soccer fields. The scene now shifts to Kolkata and to the Salt Lake Stadium. The tournament is the same, the teams are the same and the occasion the same.
But something that can never be the same is the Dempo line-up. Cristiano Junior will always be missed, no matter where Dempo plays. For they can never get a player of his calibre. Even if they do, they will never get a better human being than Junior. The devout, God-fearing Junior had come down all the way from Brazil to help earn and help his mother build a house back home. Always soft-spoken, humble to a fault, Junior was a priceless possession not just for Dempo but for the game itself.
``Everytime there is a Federation Cup match, Cristiano Junior’s memory comes back to mind,’’ Dempo coach Armando Colaco has said. It always will for those who saw him play. More so for all those who knew him personally.