Former Bagan player reveals how Amal Dutta taught him to be an overlapping wingback

AMAL DUTTA'S EXPERIMENTS in football tactics, which were often ahead of their time and never before seen in India, are the stuff of legends. And recently one of those characters in the very first Great Amal Dutta Experiment has come forward to share his views.

It's widely known that Dutta's use of overlapping side backs with a 4-4-2 formation at Mohun Bagan in 1969 was one of the first big experiments of 'the Diamond coach' that paid off big time. And a lot of the credit for proving him right goes to Bhabani Roy, the right back at Mohun Bagan at that time. But not many knew how Roy came to learn about that tactic in the first place. In a piece he wrote in Ananda Bazar Patrika, Bhabani has told that story for the first time.

He has written about Amal Dutta's habit of showing recordings of great international matches to many of the players and fans who would show interest. Back then, the only way to screen these matches was a movie projector, which Dutta would bring to different places along with rolls of films. One such screening took place near Bhabani's house. He wrote,

"Back in 1966, I heard he was going to screen the farewell match of Stanley Matthews. It was Stanley Matthews XI vs World XI. I went to the screening. Amal sir was doing his own commentary during the match. He showed us how an Irish side back playing for World XI was running up the flank whenever he got a chance, and then coming down. He said no one had seen anything like this in India. That was the night I learned the overlapping technique, 3 years before I actually played it."

Roy recounted how, once he at the club, Amal Dutta specified his duties as an overlapping side back,

"He told me, when I go up, the right stopper would take my place in the right back. So when I come down, I must cut back in and take the right stopper's place."

Bhabani Roy and Altaf were the two side backs who became India's first overlapping wingbacks in 1969. The new-look 4-4-2 formation helped Mohun Bagan win the IFA Shield, defeating East Bengal in the final. It was one of the early signs of Amal Dutta's coaching genius bearing fruit. The rest is history.