Diego Forlan returns to India as Uruguay head coach, bringing his experience of Indian football into Tuesday’s clash against the Blue Tigers in Kolkata.
Kolkata, October 5: Ten years later, Diego Forlan has returned to India, but not to play. This time, he will be instructing Darwin Nunez and La Celeste from the sidelines. Tomorrow, at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, which is still unexplored territory for former Mumbai City FC footballer Diego Forlan and the Uruguay national team, the Blue Tigers will face them in their final international friendly.
With stars like Ronald Araujo, Maximiliano Araujo, Rodrigo Bentancur, Lucas Torreira and Darwin Nunez, along with a balanced squad featuring plenty of young talent, Uruguay have come to India to face the Blue Tigers for the first time in this historic friendly.
Forlan knows the pressure that comes with football. Having experienced it as a player and now as a manager, he believes pressure is something nobody in professional football can escape.
“As a player, as a manager, you always have that pressure. You have to live with it,” Forlan said ahead of Uruguay’s friendly against India.
But beyond the names on the Uruguay team sheet, Tuesday’s night will also see a familiar face to Indian football returning in a completely different role.
Having seen Indian football from close quarters during his playing days, Forlan now returns to face the Blue Tigers with a different perspective. He has already watched India against Brazil and admitted that there were moments that caught his attention, particularly the way the Indian players combined and tried to play their football against a side of Brazil’s quality.
“India had some really good players. They knew what to do. Of course, we are talking about Brazil, which is a really strong team. But there were some really nice combinations that we could see from the Indian team,” he said.
Forlan’s assessment, however, went beyond what happens for 90 minutes on the international stage. He believes the bigger development of Indian football has to start much earlier with academies, young players and giving children more opportunities to play.
The former Mumbai City FC star also pointed towards the growth of the league as an important part of that process. More academies, stronger competitions and more young players coming through could eventually give India a wider pool of quality players at the international level.
And that is where tomorrow’s game carries another significance for the Blue Tigers. These are the kind of nights India can use to measure the progress being made, even when the opponent comes with players who regularly compete at the highest level in Europe.
Forlan knows the difference in experience, but he also knows football rarely follows the script. Uruguay, he insisted, will respect India just as they would any other opponent. For La Celeste, every international game comes with its own challenge, and tomorrow’s one at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan will be no different, expressed the head coach.
Football, for Forlan, has always been more than just a profession. It runs deep in his family, with his father Pablo Forlan also representing Uruguay, while his grandfather Juan Carlos Corazzo had a long association with the national team as a coach. Forlan himself grew up around that footballing environment, and now, years later, he is carrying the family connection forward from the Uruguay dugout.
Forlan has already experienced the noise of Indian football as a player. Tomorrow, he will hear it again — but this time from the Uruguay dugout, with the Uruguayan stars in front of him and the Blue Tigers standing between Uruguay and another international victory.
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