On Sunday evening, a short bout of respiratory problems got the better of legendary Indian football coach Amal Dutta, who passed away in Kolkata at the age of 86. While the diminutive midfielder of the India team of the 1950s was also a long-time member of the national squad, it was his heroics on the sideline as a coach that gave him immortality in Indian football.
“The news yesterday has made me numb, so I am not sure if I can continue speaking for long,” former India footballer and coach PK Banerjee told Scroll via phone on Monday. PK, as he is known, had a fierce rivalry with Dutta during his coaching career, spanning across almost three decades. “If you want me to say one word about him, he was a fighter – in every sense of the word,” added an ailing PK.
This is a deeply perceptive assessment of a colourful character, who was never shy to speak out against the bad practices that had started to creep into Indian football. After hanging up his boots early, Dutta travelled to England, where he acquired his coaching license under the tutelage of Walter Winterbottom, the first ever coach of the England national football team.
What he saw and learnt there acted as a eye-opener. And Amal Dutta started his lifelong mission of revolutionising the game tactically by leveraging his learning.
The father of the revolution
Even though India won the gold medal for football at the first Asian Games in 1951, the 10-1 thrashing against Yugoslavia at the 1952 Olympics came as a major shock. The Soviet Union team, which had the legendary Lev Yashin in its ranks, travelled to India in early 1955 and showed their superiority by scoring 99 goals in 18 matches.
Dutta foresaw the decay of the 2-3-5 formation and observed how the Russians were deploying a three-man defence successfully. When he became the coach of East Bengal in 1963, he tried to persuade the club’s top official Jyotish Guha of the efficacy of the new structure, but the elderly Guha was not ready to allow the change. Dutta left the club in 1964.
He gave up two jobs – first at Bengal Nagpur Railways and then at Ichapur Shell Factory – to become the first professional football coach of the country. At Ichpur he was also the coach of the company football team, but resigned as soon as he got to know that a high-ranked official had taken a bribe of Rs 3,000 from each of the thirty players whom his team had signed without any trials.
Born in a well-educated family, Dutta learned how to plant a bomb during the Bengal riots of 1946. His mother was the youngest daughter of well-known Bengali poet Akshay Kumar Boral. Having lost his father at 11 and learning to fend for himself to some extent, he grew up to be a disciplinarian who had absolute contempt for corruption and politics within any team he managed.
The next tactical change that Datta the coach brought about was in 1969, when he deployed Bhawani Roy and Altaf as full-backs at Mohun Bagan, a first in Indian football. The great Sailen Manna, who had been Dutta's teammate in the national team, was among those who protested .
“To introduce this innovatory system, however, he had faced considerable opposition even from within his own club. Legendary former international defender Salien Manna scoffed at a system in which defenders became attackers. Determined to attempt change, the persuasive Dutta showed the Bagan officials video cassettes of teams such as then twice World champions Brazil playing in the 4-2-4 system. Finally, Manna and others relented,” noted Novy Kapadia, a renowned football expert.
Trying to change an old system
Another spell of success followed, but Dutta was finally made the technical director of the Indian national team only as late as 1987. He introduced the 4-4-2 formation in the South Asian Games held in Calcutta, using Babu Mani and Uttam Mukherjee as wingers as India won the Gold. In the Nehru Cup next year, he continued with the same approach and just when it looked like he would take an immensely talented unit to the United Arab Emirates for the Asian Football Confederation Asian Cup qualification, he was handed the pink slip.
“It was not that the AIFF officials opposed the 4-4-2 that I tried to bring in. AIFF president (Khalifa) Ziauddin argued about it for an hour, but then surrendered. But from that moment, I had the hunch that he would remove me before the Asian Cup. However, when visa formalities were done and I was also asked to submit the names of the players, I thought I had misjudged him at first. However, I was stabbed in the back that same afternoon,” Dutta wrote in his autobiography Jotodin Bnachi (So Long As I Am Alive).
The tactic that Dutta became most famous for was, however, one he introduced at Mohun Bagan in 1997, which became an instant hit, courtesy a 6-0 win against the mighty Goan club Churchill Brothers. However, the “diamond system”, as he fondly called his 3-2-3-2 formation, crashed like a house of cards in the Federation Cup semi-final as Mohun Bagan were humbled 1-4 by East Bengal in a match attended by a record 131,000 spectators. But Dutta was unfazed.
He was as feisty outside the field as on it. Dutta was the first coach to send a legal notice to Mohun Bagan to claim his dues from the club. He was also one of the most popular football columnists, spending countless nights at newspaper offices to write about late-night matches abroad before leaving on his scooter to oversee the morning practice session.
Amal Dutta was a tactical genius and was the first modern football coach in India. He was one of the first to identify the problems that would plague the sport for years to come, but his outspoken nature meant that he didn’t have many friends in positions of power and was left hapless in most of his fights. He was, possibly, a man ahead of his times.
