The ongoing AIFF under-15 youth league bears two changes from its debut last year. The first better meets the eye, and is rather self-explanatory, courtesy its title — the age limit’s been pulled down to u-15, from u-16; second, the teams’ approach is highly positive this time – now, this is an assumption and rests on this logic: With a better understanding of itself, fed by a year’s experience in the league, the teams are only prone to get high on confidence.
Mahogany FC, the league’s only entrant from Tamil Nadu for the second consecutive time, had, in fact, affirmed it pre-season.
“Then, we were content with just playing at that level. Now, we don’t want to merely participate; we want to win the league,” its head coach Arindam Biswas had said in May.
May. A squad was formed in a hurry, he had said last time. This time, he and his support staff have taken time enough to dismantle the squad, recruit personnel anew, and let settle the reform.
It was last learnt, in May, again, that only three players from the old squad had been retained, and that the staff were busy enlisting. To change is to evolve, after all.
And, change takes time to translate to favourable results, if at all it kicks in, and works. So, having lost the first home game 1-4 to Roots Football School, Mahogany will look for a turnaround versus Boca Juniors in its second home game at the SSN College of Engineering on Sunday.
It can draw belief from the fact that Boca Juniors is the only team it beat in last season’s early exit.
Mahogany FC is pooled with Boca Juniors, Roots Football School, and Ozone Football in the Chennai-Bengaluru zone, one among the ten zones comprising 55 teams in all. Each team will play once with the other teams in its zone on a home- and-away basis. Sixteen teams will qualify for the next phase, will be divided into four groups, and the group-toppers will play the semifinals.
