KOLKATA: A day after suffering the heartbreak of losing the
Santosh Trophy final to
Kerala,
Bengal
coach
Ranjan Bhattacharya insisted on Tuesday 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 manifested that our revival is on the right track," Bhattacharya told reporters after landing at the city airport along with his players on Tuesday.
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, taking a philosophical outlook on the outcome.
"Sometimes, you stop short of realizing what you want. That's life and you have to accept it," Bhattacharya signed off.
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