Bengal football on right track: Ranjan

Kolkata: A day after suffering a heartbreaking loss in the Santosh Trophy final to Kerala, Bengal coach Ranjan Bhattacharya on Tuesday insisted that the state is on the right track to regain its lost glory in the national football championship. Bengal were three minutes away from regaining the title after taking the lead in the extra time but ended up conceding an equalizer and then losing the ensuing penalty shootout 5-4 at the Payyanad Stadium in Manjeri, Kerala, on Monday.
“We may have lost the final but the performance of my team has shown that Bengal football is on ascendancy. A few months ago, people were wondering whether the graph of Bengal football was going down. But the way we responded to the challenge and made the final in Kerala proved that our revival is on the right track,” Bhattacharya told reporters after landing at the city airport along with his players on Tuesday.
Four years ago too, Bengal had lost the final to Kerala in a penalty shootout at the Salt Lake Stadium.
Bhattacharya, however, rued that his players should have sealed the deal in the regulation time of the summit clash itself, which ended goalless. “We created a number of chances and at least on five occasions we came close to scoring in the first half. Had we managed to convert two of those chances, things would have been different for us,” he said.