PALAKKAD : Kerala is on the cusp of another Santosh Trophy title, with the final of the latest edition of the national football championship slated for Monday. Over the years, the state has turned into one of the powerhouses of the beautiful game in the country because of the efforts put in by many coaches and organisers at the grassroots. Their sweat has helped groom hundreds of quality footballers. P Shankaran is one such person. Now 86, he was the manager of the Kerala team captained by the legendary I M Vijayan when Palakkad hosted the tournament in 1991.
“Even now, I watch all the matches on television. Since most of the matches are held at night, I have installed a television in my room so that the rest of my family is not disturbed,” Shankaran says passionately.
He was one of the founding members, alongside a few like-minded people, of the Talents Football Club in Palakkad in 2003. “Harinarayanan, Gopinath, Pius, and Gopalakrishnan joined me in forming the club. Later Dr Rajagopal and M C Radhakrishnan came in. Within five years, we managed to churn out several players who went on to secure government jobs and play for departmental sides,” he says.
At the time, Gopalakrishnan had a car and they used to travel around to watch school tournaments and pick up talented players. “They were put up in a dormitory above the Lakshmi Vilas Hotel,” he recalls. Among the players who went through the drills at Talents are V P Suhair, who was arecently called up to the national team, Shankaran says.
“The club has helped detect talented players at a young age. Shankaran’s contribution to the game is immense,” reminisces Radhakrishnan. Shankaran’s tryst with serious football began after he passed out of the Victoria College in 1958 and joined the Railways. “The Railways posted me in the divisional headquarters to facilitate my coaching with their football team. From 1962, I began to play and was part of Palakkad and Kozhikode district teams. Back then, Malappuram was part of Palakkad district. In 2009, I moved to Manjeri,” he recounts. Their club was later rechristened Talents Football Academy, says Radhakrishnan.
“After I retired as physical education professor from the Kerala Varma College in Thrissur, I arrived in Palakkad in 2011. Now, there are 350 trainees, including 65 girls, who are trained under the leadership of technical director P K Rajeev,” he says. The academy has five centres in the district.