Kerala footballers jubiliate after winning Santosh Trophy by beating Bengal at Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata. PTIKolkata: Kerala coach Satheevan Balan credited his youngsters in the team for the success, saying it is the freshness in their ranks that helped him plan in his way and mastermind the triumph in the Santosh Trophy tournament, here on Sunday.
This is the youngest-ever Kerala team to take part in the nationals.
"It's a fresh team and my technical staff also is new so I could work freely," coach Balan told reporters.
"I could choose the players I like and they have done an excellent job. We have thirteen players without job and they are young players," the former India U-19 coach added.
Kerala won all their matches leading up to the final. They finished top of Group A and also got the better of Bengal in the group stages.
"Recently, there are many youth leagues (in Kerala) which is encouraging for upcoming boys," the national team scout said.
Balan had previously been vocal about the lack of promoters and exposure hurting the growth of Kerala football.
Meanwhile, Bengal coach Ranjan Chowdhury blamed their heartbreaking loss to Kerala on injuries to key players.
Trailing 1-2, Bengal were reduced to 10 players with eight minutes left in the extra time, but they managed to level through Tirthankar Sarkar's curling freekick in the 120+6th minute and take the match into penalty shootout.
Kerala sealed the issue 4-2 in the penalty shootout as Bengal missed the duo of Bidyashagar Singh and Sourav Dasgupta sorely, Chowdhury said.
"We had to make the substitutes all because of injuries... The duo was supposed to take penalties. It was a lost battle in the penalty shootout, much before it began," Chowdhury rued at the post-match news conference.
Bidyasagar, who had scored the solitary goal in their win over Chandigarh, sustained an injury and was replaced by Sandip Bhattacharjee in the 90+2nd minute.
At the start of extra time, Sourav Dasgupta also picked an injury to be replaced by Krishna Biswas.
Back in 1988-89, Bengal downed Kerala 4-3 on penalties after they were one-all. In 1993-94, Cuttack, the match too was decided in the penalty shootout when Bengal beat Kerala 5-3 after they were locked 2-2.
This was Kerala's sixth Santosh Trophy title and first since 2004-05.
Kerala had downed Punjab 3-2 with an extra time goal to win their last Santosh Trophy in New Delhi in October 2004.
