PSV Eindhoven, former Eredivisie Champions visited india in the 1990’s. The Tata Steel Super Soccer cup series which ensure that foreign teams play Indian teams in our own country also featured Sau Paolo (now Liga do Brasil), Bochum XI (now Bundesliga). The players that were representing the foreign clubs involved members which were a part of their national side setup and had recently played in the 1990 World Cup. The likes of Gerald Vanenberg, Hans Van Bruekelen and Gheorghe Popescu were a part of the squad that visited India. The Legendary coach Sir Bobby Robson stated that the purpose of his visit was to learn from Indian Football. The First match between India XI and PSV was a fixture that was completely one sided ended 8 – 0 in the favour of the Netherland’s side. The second match against these two sides ended 7 – 1 as PSV emerged as winners. However, the Captain of the Indian side, Bikash Panji, managed to find the back of the net.
The reason why India received such a thrashing even though the players representing India were the best of the lot, was simple – Lack of Match Time. The players lacked Match time as a team as they were barely acquainted which resulted in lack of coordination ultimately costing them in the tournament.
The matches ended badly but we didn’t give them a clean sheet the second time! Right? Looking at India’s Football History, we can easily figure out that we were past the golden era of football. Even Though we conceded 15 goals in two matches, the second match was better than the first. It was slow but the change in the second match was visible. The efforts and determination to get past the PSV defense finally bore fruit when we managed to get beat their keeper with the help of the captain, Bikash Panji. Now if add the lack of game-time as a team which resulted in poor coordination, it’s safe to say that a team that was well coordinated would have performed much better.
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