Penalty shootouts often unfold in unpredictable ways. But when Sandesh Jhingan stepped up to take his penalty, in the Indian Super League playoff shootout against Mumbai City FC, at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium on Sunday, there was an air of inevitability about it. The whole of the West Block A, otherwise a section as vocal as they come, held its collective breath as if to pretend that there was a chance that Jhingan would miss his shot and the shootout would continue. But even they must have known it was going to hit the back of the net. This story was not going to end this way.
Comparing feats in Indian football to those elsewhere in the world often draws smirks of ridicule from the sceptics. But even then, it is tempting to match up Bengaluru FC’s comeback story this season against cases elsewhere. When 2022 drew to a close, The Blues were ninth out of eleven teams, with just ten points from 12 games. Fast forward to March and they now find themselves in the ISL final. On the way, they notched up ten straight victories. Indeed, in 2023, the only game that they have lost in normal time is the one on Sunday, where they still progressed in the end. If this were a movie, it would be panned for being too unrealistic.
"We have come a long way for what we have achieved so far this season from where we took a lot of mental strength and togetherness and we have had that among everybody, not just the coaches and the staff," said Bengaluru coach Simon Grayson after the win. Mental strength and togetherness, they may have displayed in abundance, but there is a lot more than that to this resurgence. There are numerous tweaks that Grayson himself made to the tactics, the most significant of which was perhaps moving Javi Hernandez to a deeper role from where he started controlling games. The likes of Roy Krishna and Sunil Chhetri returned to goalscoring form — their twelve league matches of 2022 saw them score 8 goals but the number ballooned to 22 in their eleven games of 2023 so far. And then, there was the rise of players like N Sivasakthi and Rohit Kumar, who brought a much-needed dose of energy to a side that sorely needed it.
Then, there were the fans in Bengaluru, who kept flocking to the stadium despite the team losing game after game. Ever since its inception, BFC has had to build a fanbase from scratch unlike teams in Kerala or Goa who were handed a football-mad catchment area to tap into. When they first moved into the Sree Kanteerava Stadium from the much-smaller Bangalore Football Stadium, the main gripe was that their few thousand fervent supporters, vocal as they were, only filled a quarter of the stadium making it seem mostly empty. On Sunday, there was no such disparaging comments as the stands brimmed with blue. Among them were a healthy number of kids, at least some of whom would have been inspired by the story this season to keep returning year after year.
Now Bengaluru FC, and quite a few of their supporters, will head to Goa to find out what the ending to this incredible story is. It may or may not end with them lifting the Cup. But regardless of the result, the Blues faithful will sing about this one for quite some time.