Following a disastrous exit from the senior national football championship Santosh Trophy in the final round in Bhubaneswar senior Bengal national team might lose an opportunity to take part in the National Games football, to be held this year in October in Goa also. National Games is held with a gap of every two years but it is taking place this October, only a year after it was held in Gujarat last year. The reason is The Asian Games. The top three teams are likely to be invited to the National Games football.

Swarup Biswas, one of the IFA vice presidents expressed discontent while speaking to Parallel Sports on Tuesday. He said, "Another vice-president of IFA Saurav Paul, and me-both alerted the secretary of the association Anirban Dutta about the situation that the performers in the Kolkata Premier League last season were being ignored. The footballers from Aryan, Bhawanipore, and Kidderpore who were consistent, helping their respective teams to finish within the top four were not called to the final preparatory camp in Kalyani. But I am sorry to say that the IFA secretary did not care and we have seen the result. Most of the footballers who got the chance are from Customs."

Incidentally, commenting on Bengal's disastrous exit from the Santosh Trophy, IFA secretary Anirban Dutta explained "There should be no excuse behind the pathetic exit. Bengal has lost all its matches in the final round. I am not shocked but surprised also that these boys guided Bengal to become champion in the National Games. These were the boys whose performance helped Bengal to be unbeaten in the preliminary round of the Santosh Trophy. I just cannot explain how they performed so poorly in the final phase."

Significantly Bengal coach BIswajit Bhattacharya held the Kolkata clubs responsible for allowing the footballers who were called in the final preparatory camp at Kalyani. He revealed along with the 28 campers 11 footballers were called up. But they did not turn up. Swarup Biswas questioned, "Then why the coach has not informed IFA immediately when he observed the footballers were not being released by the respective clubs?"

IFA secretary has promised to make a postmortem of the ruinous performance soon.