Liston Colaco's record-breaking transfer might be superficially misleading

Liston Colaco’s career graph skyrocketed to an enormous extent in the past twelve months, a rare phenomenon in Indian football, with the player recently bagging a record-transfer move to ATK-Mohun Bagan. This comes days after making his debut for the Indian football team. Superficially, the Goa-based player is daydreaming in seventh heaven, but whether the move would fast-track his growth is another discussion altogether.

Hyderabad FC narrowly missed out on a top-four finish in the previous domestic season, but the spirited campaign earned them several accolades with six national team call-ups for starters. Liston Colaco was the leader of the pack, with the footballers’ eye-catching display down the wings stamped as one of the major talking points of the season. That said, it can’t be ignored that Hyderabad FC head coach Manolo Marquez was in a position to show faith in the young lad, with him featuring in 19 out of their 20 matches – more than enough time to establish himself.

Take out a piece from the puzzle, the story would have fallen apart. Colaco, with two goals and three assists, was equally responsible for the outcome. Wondering how he might fit in the scheme of things at ATK-Mohun Bagan? Well, that’s a million-dollar question.

ATK-Mohun Bagan’s philosophy

Even though the scoring escalated in the following season, their playing style was constant but finishing with a negative goal difference while in charge of FC Pune City in the 2016-17 ISL saw him go into hibernation. Things changed with a call-up in 2019 from ATK opened up avenues once again and the tactician was back at normal tides – churning-out results in a typical Antonio Lopez Habas way, characterised by minimum risk and rock-solid defence with 1-0 victories predominant.

The nature of Habas’ game is such that it contradicts the philosophy of attacking midfielders or wingers, which is where the root cause of the problem lies. For instance, Marcelinho, one of the best foreigners ever to play in the ISL, was roped in by ATK-Mohun Bagan midway through the last season, but he was far from playing his natural game as a winger. To put it more precisely, the style of play adopted by ATK-Mohun Bagan never allowed him to do the same.

What the future plan indicates

With the club releasing him following the end of the season, the intentions were clear from the think tank. In the previous season, ATK-Mohun Bagan played with three forwards in almost all their games - Roy Krishna as their main man, while Manvir Singh and David Williams in withdrawn roles. 

On the flip side, it negated the cushion for having attacking midfielders or wingers, as was the case in the inaugural season of the ISL, where Fikru Lalema, Baljit Singh Saini, and Luis Garcia formed the front three. It is likely Habas will adopt a similar and tested approach in the future as well.

Either way, Habas prefers two overseas players combining with a lone domestic one. With Manvir Singh hogging the limelight in the previous season, having also netted once during India's international friendly against Oman last month, there’s no way he can be left out from the reckoning.

For the sake of argument, let’s say ATK-Mohun Bagan use him as the third cog in the wheel, then what plans do they have for Michael Soosairaj? The Tamil-Nadu-based footballer was instrumental in their 2019-20 ISL winning campaign but was sidelined after suffering an injury in the opening game of the previous season. 

With an experienced player like him back in the mix, how can Antonio Lopez Habas afford to bench him? That re-routes us back to the problem we’ve been discussing. Until now it has been made clear that Liston Colaco won’t be seen as much on the pitch compared to his Hyderabad FC days.

If you believe that Habas would likely sacrifice one foreigner and field two Indian players up front, well, there’s another twist to the tale. Both Soosairaj and Liston prefer to play as left-wingers and couple that with a similar playing style, it puts rest to the debate altogether. It is clear that their playing time would be divided, which, for two footballers in their prime days is not healthy for career development. ATK-Mohun Bagan might have added options to their bench, but at a dear cost.