Mohun Bagan: Stanly Rozario out, Subhas Bhowmick in

The I-League 2010/11 has only completed three of its 26 rounds, but it already has its first coaching casualty in Mohun Bagan AC's Stanly Rozario who resigned yesterday after the teams 0-2 loss against Churchill Brothers SC at Goa's Nehru Stadium on Sunday.

And the Maidan giants acted quickly and appointed former successful East Bengal Club coach Subhas Bhowmick as their new coach. But as Subhas Bhowmick does not hold an AFC 'A' coaching licence, he will not be termed as chief coach but as technical director, while the club will name another person as his assistant who has the required qualification. For Bhowmick it will be the first time as coach of Mohun Bagan, for whom be played twice in his career; but his last coaching assignments at Mohammedan Sporting Club, Salgaocar SC and East Bengal were never again as successful as his second spell with East Bengal from 2002 to 2005.

In his resignation letter Stanly wrote, "Since Mohun Bagan is a formidable club and top contenders in Indian Football, I want the Team should bounce back and bring back the winning attitude. So in this point of time in the greater interest of the Club and the Team, I would like to step down from my job as Chief Coach."

For Stanly Rozario it is the second time in a December that he is leaving a Maidan giant. Like this time around Stanly somewhat left, somewhat had to go in 2008 as East Bengal coach after losing against Mohun Bagan in the Federation Cup semifinals. Last season he coached Shillong Lajong FC, but they went down at the end of the season, while before the East Bengal assignment Stanly had coached Salgaocar SC and the Army team for many years before being assistent of Bob Houghton at Team India.

In the reasons why it didn't work out Stanly wrote, "It is my immense pleasure to have worked as the Chief Coach of McDowell Mohun Bagan Football Team for the last several months from June 2010, during which the Team performed extremely well and reached the finals of the Federation Cup by defeating top teams like Salgaocar 6-1 and Dempo SC in the semis and lost to East Bengal due to referee’s poor decisions. In the Platinum Jubilee Cup, the Team once again gave a wonderful performance by defeating Sheffield FC of England and lost via tie-breaker in the final match. In the Calcutta Football League, we stood runners-up. So in all three tournaments the Team stood Runners-up. However during this entire period, many vital players got injured and got sickness eg. Diamondstar of Asian origin played only few matches and got injured. Chidi Edeh was also having injury and with that he tried his level best. Apart from this Sk. Azim, Ishfaq, Sagram, Kinshuk and Satish Kumar were unavailable due to injuries and sickness for many days which affected the team performance.

With these injury problems we started the I League, still the team played well against Pune FC at Pune and drew the match 1-1 after unfortunately squandering many simple chances to score and win by a handsome margin. The team conceded a goal in the 82nd minute of a defensive lapse. Losing to HAL, Bangalore was a disaster and a great disappointment for all of us. Still we started well in the away game against strong Churchill Brothers. But we conceded an early goal in the very 3rd minute which killed the momentum and the spirit of the game. But boys tried their level best and created many chances but could not able to utilize and we lost the match by 2-0 of a poor penalty decision of Referee."

Meanwhile Subhas Bhowmick doesn't have much time to regroup as Mohun Bagan AC host Dempo SC on Thursday in a Round 4 I-League match in Kolkata.