The Nehru Cup triumph couldn’t have come at a better time for Indian football. No praise is too high for Bhaichung and his teammates, but Bob Houghton deserves a fair bit of credit as well.

In my book, the coach’s best achievement was to convince the AIFF to have a long national camp with all the players he wanted. Come to think of it, the entire first phase of the Calcutta league’s Premier Division was staged without a single national team player donning the colours of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. That’s quite unprecedented.

Houghton’s wish being granted meant he had the players together for two months. That is any national coach’s dream. Even a Dunga, a McClaren or a Donadoni will be delighted to run the Brazilian, English or Italian camp for seven-eight weeks before an important tournament.

Clubs dominate football in most countries and the national team often gets the treatment of the poor cousin. Houghton has done well to change the general trend by putting it into the AIFF officials’ heads that in a country like India, the national team has to be given the utmost importance and club players have to be released when needed.

The other masterstroke from the British coach was the Portugal tour idea. We may not have played against a first division club, but the very fact that we didn’t lose any of the four matches gave our boys a lot of self-belief and confidence.

Houghton didn’t have too much success in his early months as India coach, but he didn’t lose patience. He studied our system and the psyche of our players, and it didn’t take him long to realise what we needed.

The talent was there, the longing to win as well. But we were not being able to win consistently enough as the opposition was too strong for us. The way-out was to play against relatively weaker rivals so that we could win more often. That would help inculcate the winning habit into our boys, the coach figured out.

And that’s exactly what is happening. We won two matches and drew two in Portugal, won four and lost one in the Nehru Cup which didn’t have a star-studded field. Syria was the only tough team, but who cares? The idea is to win international matches and tournaments. The more, the merrier.

We have definitely taken a step forward, thanks to Houghton’s quiet and astute planning. Let us make the best use of Houghton’s tenure, but let us also be aware that in the long run we’ll need a desi coach to take charge of the national team. The best way to groom one would be to have people like Derrick Pereira and/or Subrata Bhattacharya assist the Englishman so that they can pick up some finer points of coaching.

It’s too early to compare Houghton with some of the previous foreign coaches, but one thing is certain: he is a much better coach than Constantine.

Milovan was a very good coach, he too was very patient and a very good observer of the game. Then we had Gelei, Pesek and Akhramov, who all had their good points. Right now, Houghton is doing a fine job and let’s hope that he turns out to be the most successful India coach.