Inter-school football:Don Bosco's problem of plenty

With a big talent pool, the Matunga outfit's 'b' team is a force to reckon with too as they proved with a 6-0 drubbing of adarsh in U-16 league

With a big talent pool, the Matunga outfit's 'b'u00a0team is a force to reckon withu00a0too asu00a0u00a0they proved with a 6-0 drubbing of adarsh in U-16 league

While some schools can barely manage to assemble a decent team, there are some schools with a strong sports culture that have been fielding two equally strong teams, 'A' and 'B'. But the future for the 'B' team players doesn't seem exciting.



Every year the top two teams get promoted to the higher division but if the school already has a team in that division, then the second team would not get upgraded to the higher level even if they have done well to finish amongst the top two. The Mumbai School Sports Association rule states that there can't be two teams from the same school participating in the same division.

Before the start of the season, MSSA had thought of permitting entry to one team per school but later changed their decision.

Don Bosco coach Leslie Machado said: "When I told the boys that there wouldn't be a 'B' team, they were all disappointed and stopped coming for practice. We had to prepare this team at the last moment. We have a lot of players. Earlier, we used to have three teams. We have two teams for all our age groups. Also having a second side improves the standard of the 'A' team."

MSSA football secretary Xavier Faria said: "Some schools have excess players. We don't want to discourage them. After all MSSA is all about encouraging these youngsters."

Known for displaying high quality football, Don Bosco (Matunga) 'B' are back again to dominate their opponents.
Yesterday they thrashed Adarsh High School (Prabhadevi) 6-0 in the under-16 Div IV-Nike MSSA inter-school match at Azad Maidan. Henderson Dias scored a brace while James Fernandes, Romil Khutia, Vishal Belani and Sanil Mehta chipped in with a goal each.

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