“He was one of the humblest guys I have met. And he was more than a decent coach who knew what he wanted from his players.” That was Stephen Constantine on Aloke Mukherjee, once upon a time his assistant-coach for India. “I love this job and I want people working with me to love this job. Aloke did.”
We needed him: Bhutia
In charge of a team in Cyprus, Constantine and I were talking on Wednesday, three days after Mukherjee released his memoirs in Bangla, co-authored by sports journalist Arghya Bandopadhyay. Bhaichung Bhutia was the immediate reason for reaching out to the two-time former India coach. “You know how Stephen could be,” said Bhutia at the launch. “He would yell, say you were not fit to play for India. We needed Aloke da to believe in ourselves again, to be normal again.”
For someone known for forgetting highlights of a career as long as it was glorious, Bhutia’s immediate recall of this unwitting good-cop-bad-cop routine was telling.
In “From Delhi To The Den”, which he wrote with Owen Amos, Constantine mentions a half-time talk with Bhutia during the 2002 Asian Games with India trailing Turkmenistan 0-1. “Call yourself a captain? I asked Bhaichung angrily. “You’re the superstar of this team and this is how you play?”. Constantine tore into Bhutia again in the dressing room, he said. Bhutia scored twice in a 3-1 win.
If I played some of my best football for India under Constantine, a part of the credit should go to Aloke da, said Bhutia looking at the man sat next to him on the dais of the Calcutta Sports Journalists’ Club, not far from Eden Gardens and the enclosed grounds where for a decade and a half, Mukherjee reigned with crunching tackles and booming left-footers.
A fine career
At a time when the Kolkata Maidan was alive with the sound of football and players felt the abuse and appreciation of fans in a way that is scarcely believable now, Mukherjee played for all three of Asia’s oldest, extant clubs. In his first year at one of the big three, in 1981, PK Banerjee had seen enough to call him for India. PK Banerjee’s brother Prasun Banerjee, now an MP and one of India’s finest midfielders in an earlier life, writes in Mukherjee’s book “Lal Carder Baire”, that if he stopped Surajit Sengupta, he could get an India call.
Including two Asian Games, Mukherjee played 49 times for India scoring once, against Algeria in the 1986 Nehru Cup. “He knew his limitations,” said Manoranjan Bhattacharjee, Mukherjee’s teammate at East Bengal, Bengal and India. “He understood what a defender’s primary job was, so rarely would he be caught out after going on the overlap.” With Aloke in front, I knew I was safe,” said goalkeeper Bhaskar Ganguly, India captain in the 1982 Asian Games.
At the function, Bikash Panji remembered Mukherjee’s hard tackles “that usually got the ball and not the man” and in the book, Prasanta Banerjee talks of his accuracy with sliding tackles, the former India stalwarts united in their praise of a left-back rated as one of the best ever in the country by the venerable PK Banerjee. One who had never seen a red card. Hence, the name of the book.
Too nice
Mukherjee has coached India, Bengal and at all of Kolkata’s top clubs. On his watch – deputising for Bhattacharjee who was on a break –East Bengal became the first Indian club to beat a team from west Asia at their home, a 2-0 win against Jordan’s Al-Wehdat. Mukherjee’s teammates were unanimous that he was too nice to have a long coaching career at either Mohun Bagan, East Bengal or Mohammedan Sporting. Precisely what got him the affection of many India players.
Mukherjee sat quietly as platitudes poured from players, journalists and club officials. He spoke last, saying a career that had begun under legendary coaches Murari Sur and Tejesh (Bagha) Shome would not have been possible without the people he was sharing the stage with. As he thanked football for giving a boy from Ichapur, almost 30km from Kolkata, a life and an identity, Mukherjee’s voice quivered.
