Hi everyone and apologies for the long absence. The title of this blog has been changed from ‘India, Football and Life’ to just ‘Football and Life’. The change has been made because I did not go to India for the last ISL season and I won’t be going to the 2021-22 season either. It is a shame but due to COVID and some other enforced changes it was not feasible for me to come out to India again. I hope to come back in the future but that is out of my hands as the say! In the meantime there has been plenty of changes around here, COVID has caused everybody problems but 12 months ago my wife and I decided to relocate from Bristol back to Ipswich, Suffolk. I have family there in the county and I also spent 10 years there playing for Ipswich Town Football Club from 1975 to 1985, in that time winning the FA Cup in 1978, the UEFA Cup in 1981 and runners up in the top division two years running 1980/81 & 1981/82. The Club are having very different fortunes now and over the last decade or so, hopefully things will change for them soon because they have fantastic supporters. #wecanwinthis
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It is nice to have the chance to stay in one place for more than a couple of days and Le Royal Meridien is not too shabby a place to be based for the next couple of days. We did a game last night which was a pretty poor event in the first half and only got slightly better in the second half thanks too an improvement by Kerala `Blasters, but it still finished with neither side managing to score and the goalkeepers really could have had a night off. Let's hope Chennaiyin put up a better display on Wednesday when they take on Mumbai FC at the Marina Arena. It is still Diwali here, The Festival of Light, 48 hours of fireworks going off all the time everywhere. The only fireworks on the pitch last night were after the final whistle when someone must have spoken out of turn and suddenly all the players and most of the coaching staff of both teams were in the middle of pitch with lots of pushing and shoving going on. These two teams have a bit of history for this sort of thing, notably a couple of punch ups at the end of last season. For some reason even Marco Materazzi, the Chennaiyin manager decided to get involved grabbing people by the next and allegedly giving someone a slap in the tunnel after it had all calmed down. I am pleased to say Steve Coppell and his assistant Wally Downes just stood back and watched from a safe distance, I think Steve was a bit concerned that he might have got in the way of Duwayne Kerr, the 6'5'' Jamaican goalkeeper for Chennaiyin who is a massive dude. I think because of the poor previous record of the Chennaiyin players, and Marco Materazzi who has been in trouble here before, the Chennai club could find itself being the subject of disciplinary matters yet again.
Sitting here in Kolkata enjoying a day off has given me chance to add up the miles of this years Indian Super League schedule. With only two flights and 3 games left in the league programme the mileage after the last league game in Mumbai will be approximately 23,000 miles of internal flights. After that last game in Mumbai there will be two semi finals to get to, whichever teams qualify and I think that Mumbai, who are confirmed, will be joined by Atletico de Kolkata, Delhi and Kerala. That is if my predictions come through! The team that then finishes in 1st place will play the 4th placed team and 2nd will play third with the first leg played at the venue of the team finishing in the lower position. We will be doing the 2nd semi final, first and second leg. Now it just depends on how the teams are placed after the last league game which decides our next movements.
Goa, with two games left, are already out and now not able to qualify for a top 4 place and the same applies to Chennaiyin. Pune are struggling and need to win their last two games whilst North East United also need to win both their remaining games. Kerala are my bet to take that 4 spot but it could go down to the last game of the season between Kerala and NE Utd, in Kerala. What an atmosphere that will be with potentially a full house of 65,000. The stadium actually shakes when it is that full, which can be a bit worrying and the final itself this year is at Kerala on the 18th December. The last few weeks have gone past really quickly, 13 games in the month of November, and the goals have been flying in. Let's hope it stay that way through to the end. When I first started playing for Ipswich Allan Hunter and Kevin Beattie were the two centre backs, and what a partnership that was. The rugged no nonsense attitude of Hunter and the pure natural strength, speed and talent from Kevin made these two one of the toughest pairings to have to play against. I played alongside both of these two as I replaced one or other of them if they got injured, which was to prove an ongoing issue for Kevin. In today's era the medical attention and rehabilitation of injured players is so much better than it used to be. Smaller squads of players in those days meant that managers were always trying to get their best players back from injury as quickly as possible, and on many occasions that was a very short term view of the players long term welfare. Kevin was rushed back time and again and eventually it took it's toll and also the odd surgical blunder didn't help matters. Allan Hunter was and still is a hero of mine, tough as old boots and as honest as the days long. If he ever said 'well played' to you then you knew that you must have played a blinder! Eventually Terry Butcher and myself established ourselves as the main two centre backs at Ipswich and I hope we gave Ipswich Town another few years of solid defending in the same mould as Hunter and Beattie. Other centre backs, that I played alongside at club level, were Steve Walsh and John O'Neill at Leicester City. John is a great fella and a gentleman. Steve Walsh has gone on to become a cult figure in the eyes of all Leicester City supporters, and deservedly so. Steve is someone that you would want alongside yourself if you ever got into any trouble, on the pitch or off, fearless and as hard as nails. He scored many important goals for Leicester and was a great leader of a number of different teams over the years of his service with the club. On to Southampton and I first started playing there alongside Kevin Moore (RIP). Kevin was a raw boned lad from Grimsby and was one of five members of the Moore family to play for Grimsby. He made over 400 appearances for The Mariners and his two brothers Dave and Andy, his dad Roy and uncle Norman were all regulars in the stripes at Blundell Park. Kevin died of a rare form of dementia in 2013, on his 55th birthday. Neil Ruddock was my next partner in crime at The Dell and there was never a dull moment with Razor around. Another great character both on and off the pitch and a better player than a lot of people gave him credit for. He later went on to play at Spurs, for a second time, Liverpool, West Ham and Palace. Neil also won 1 full international cap and apparently was voted 17th hardest player of all time,,,well I would like to know who the other 16 are? At international level my partners varied between Dave Watson, Phil Thompson and Terry Butcher and I only played 11 full international games, and 4 of those were against Australia in friendlies, away! I have briefly mentioned him earlier in this article and my old room mate, Mr Butcher, goes down as the best centre half that I played alongside. Tough, hard, brave, competitive, all the qualities that good centre backs have to have in my opinion, and Terry had those qualities in abundance and he is 6'4''. Also he was fun both on and off the pitch and we broke the odd curfew along the way. He fought back from some horrendous injuries, not just the cut on the head which bloodied his England shirt, but a very bad broken nose injury which resulted in two full blood transfusions and a good two to three months out of action before regaining the strength and bulk that he had lost after a long stay in hospital. Terry had success with Ipswich Town, Rangers up in Scotland,,and also won 77 Full England caps. He will always be remembered for this photograph though; The new season of the Indian Super League is nearly upon us. 2 new teams this year, Bengaluru and Jamshedpur are added to the original eight taking the league up to ten teams strong.
More teams means a longer season and plans are underway for me to be out there from 13th November ‘17 to mid March ‘18. This is my first posting since returning from India last year and I hope you will follow my journey and experiences this year, it should be fun. Yesterday we moved from Bogmallo Beach Resort, due to the hotel being booked solid, to The Nanutel in the middle of Margao, quite close to the stadium for tonight's game between Goa and Mumbai. This is a very basic hotel and we are only here for one more night. Tonight we start a hectic run of six games in 10 days, Goa, Pune, Mumbai, Guwahati, Goa and Chennai on the 26th Nivember. So tomorrow afternoon we fly again and this time back up to Pune for their game against Delhi. Zico's team Goa really need another home win tonight to keep up any hope of making the top four at the end of the league programme. A top four slot gets them into the semi finals where we know anything could happen. Tonight will be a full house and the atmosphere should be fabulous. Last night we dined out at Martin's Corner, a very popular restaurant which is always on our list of places to eat whenever we are in Goa. After dinner we had a party to attend back at the hotel in the Zodiac Bar, it was a birthday party for Shiva Kumar Nanjappa, Senior Audio on our crew. Fair play to him he invited all the crew, and their families if they were present in Goa, and picked up the tab at the end of a really great evening. Shiva Kumar you are a top fella and a gentleman!
The currency crisis has not got any better, nearly all ATMs are 'out of cash' so are some of the banks and the ones with money still have massive queues outside. Thank goodness for a credit card. The problem should ease in a few more days so they say, but I imagine it will be a lot longer before anything returns remotely back to whatever is taken for 'normal' over here! What a weekend, the highs of seeing all the ex players at the golf and dinner on Friday and then the lows of losing to Rotherham United at Portman Road on Saturday. One thing I learnt very early on from being involved in professional football was to never get too high when things were going well for you and never get too low when you cannot seem to do anything right! Recently I have been looking at newspaper cutting, mainly for this blog, and for every one that is praising your performance or giving you the headlines for scoring a goal or winning a game there is every chance that the next cutting will be like a slap in the face. Everything from giving away a penalty, getting sent off, making a mistake which cost a game or just playing like a twat, it is all there in black and white. Sometimes the reporters can make it appear worse than it was, or they say later that they are not responsible for the headlines, it still hurts whatever spin they put on it. Over the next few weeks I am going to dig out some articles to prove my point, the good and the bad, but for now I am still going to enjoy looking back at some of the ex players that I had the pleasure of meeting again this weekend. The picture above is in the Ipswich v Arsenal programme from 15th September 1984. It was great to see Laurie Sivell, Trevor Whymark and Brian Talbot all together on Friday night. The Arsenal team that played that day was not too shabby; Pat Jennings, Viv Anderson, Kenny Sansam, Brian Talbot, David O'Leary, Tommy Caton RIP, Stewart Robson, Paul Davis, Paul Mariner, Tony Woodcock and Charlie Nicholas. Ipswich won that day 2-1 with Romeo Zondervan and myself scoring. Our line-up was an interesting one; Grew, Burley, McCall, Zondervan, Osman, Butcher, Putney, Brennan, D'Avray, O'Callaghan, Gates. it was our first win of the season, drawing the first 4 games and losing a week earlier to Leicester City 1-2 at Filbert Street. (Are we looking at the new Premier League Champions in Leicester City?). Arsenal were top of the table before kick off with 3 wins and 1 draw, on paper it looks like a terrific result for us. Also on Friday night I had a long chat with Mark Lomas whose picture I just came across in the Town v Newcastle programme March 23rd 1985. Hope you like the pic Mark! Prior to this game we were sitting third off the bottom of the Canon League Division One Table., level on points with Luton but we had a better goal difference, and Stoke City were bottom with only 14 points from 29 games. i was second top goal scorer at this point of the season for Ipswich, only 6 goals behind Eric Gates, We survived,,,just! Picture above is one of my favourite ex players, someone else that I grew up with in the junior ranks of Ipswich Town FC. This picture shows Alan Brazil when he was playing for Spurs, the first club that he joined after leaving Ipswich. Alan was by far the best 'one on one' finisher that I ever played with. The rest of his goal scoring skills were magnificent but in a one on one situation with the goalkeeper there was only ever going to one outcome!
i think we first played together in the youth team in about 1975/76, so we go back a long way. To say he is a character is not doing him justice. He has achieved a cult following with TalkSport radio but he has never changed since I first met him. First to the party and last to leave, great company any time, any place, any where! Last night I watched Atletico de Kolkata make it through to the final of the Hero Indian Super League by holding on to their slim one goal lead in Mumbai. The final score was 0-0 so Atletico went through 3-2 on aggregate. The game was spoilt at the final whistle by a mass brawl again which ended up with every player, coach and manager on the field of play and all involved to some extent. Belencoso the Atletico striker was sent off after the final whistle for a head butt, Cunha for Mumbai was also red carded for a Kung Fu kick. Too many games are ending in this manner this season and something must be done pretty quickly. Let's hope it doesn't ' kick off' again tonight, though I feel it could well finish in the same manner as last night's game as there was a lot of bad feeling in the first leg of the Kerala v Delhi semi final 1st leg. Kerala go into tonight's game with a one goal advantage but Delhi have been very strong on their own patch season. It could go to extra time and maybe even penalties. It was an early start for me this morning, leaving the hotel in Mumbai at 06.30 for an 08.30 flight to Delhi airport, followed by a 90 minute drive to the hotel before getting prepared for tonight's clash with the second place still available to either Delhi Dynamos or Kerala Blasters. This was the view from one of our cameramen who spent the first 45 mins quite high up above the Mumbai Football Arena!
We now know who is going to be in the final of The Hero Indian Super League 2016 after last night's game between Delhi Dynamos and Kerala Blasters ended up going to penalties with Kerala coming out as eventual winners.
Kerala went into the game with a one goal advantage from the semi final first leg and set out to try and increase that lead rather than sit back and see if see if a draw would take them through. Delhi also started in a very positive frame of mind but were rocked back when their central midfield player Milan Singh received a red card after about 30 minutes for a very high tackle on Mehtab Hossain. Though they played from then on with only 10 men Delhi were the better side but failed to convert any of the chances created until Marcelinho scored and tied the game at 1-1. Their joy was short lived as Duckens Nazon replied for Kerala immediately with a good individual goal to again put Kerala in front on aggregate. As the first half came towards an end Delhi surprised even themselves by stealing a second goal from a free kick, a deflected header by centre back Ruben Rocha, and again bringing the game to all square. The second half and both the periods of extra time were goalless, and Delhi still looked the better footballing team even though a man short. Kerala wasted chance after chance by individuals trying to steal the glory for themselves. It was to be a penalty shoot out. Josu from Kerala was first up, even though he was now suspended for the final having picked up a second yellow card, and he got Kerala off to the perfect start with a solid penalty. Florent Malouda strode up purposefully to take the first for Delhi, the best Marquee player of the season, and surprised everybody in the stadium by blasting his penalty miles over the top of the crossbar. He was not on his own, two more penalties were missed by Delhi from their first four with Kerala's Antonio German also missing. Kerala were therefore through to the final and another meeting with Atletico de Kolkata on Sunday 18th December. This fixture is a repeat of the 2014 final which eventually saw Kolkata crowned as the first Champions of the Hero Indian Super League. After working at both semi final venues over the last two days I am now sitting on a Vistara plane at Delhi airport heading to Kochi, in Kerala, the venue for the final. It is expected to attract a full house again, but personally I think it will be a full house plus a few thousand more. |
AuthorRussell Osman is a former England & Ipswich Footballer, 4 Handicap Golfer and Father of 3. Archives
April 2018
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