Calcutta: Man-of-the-Match Raman Vijayan, who scored the winner for Mohammedan Sporting against Mohun Bagan on Sunday, dedicated the goal to his four year-old daughter Shruti.

“She is just a four-year-old kid and doesn’t understand the game. But I like to dedicate this goal to my beloved daughter,” Vijayan said after the match.

Vijayan, however, didn’t think his scintillating performance had brought him back into limelight. “I have been playing for a long time and during these years I have scored a lot of goals,” he quipped.

He, however, admitted that experience had the last laugh in the match. “The experience of Mike (Okoro) and I was the decisive factor,” he said, adding though that “the win was a result of collective effort by the players.”

For coach Subhas Bhowmick, it was uncharacteristically something “personal”. “I am very much relieved,” Bhowmick told the post-match media conference.

His opposite in Mohun Bagan, Biswajit Bhattacharya, pointed out that the defeat was not the end of his aspirations. “It’s a marathon league. Some teams can have bad phases while we recover and ultimately win the league. The title hopes haven’t ended yet,” Bhattacharya maintained.

Bhowmick, on the other hand, refused to buy the suggestion that Bhaichung Bhutia had an off-day. “I don’t think he was dormant. The way he set the goal up for Dipendu (Biswas) is something you can only expect from him,” he said.

Treading a path far away from glorifying any individualistic performance, what Bhowmick hailed was the collective effort of his side. “I will not say any good or bad words about any single player. What I can say is, we have won the match and collected three important points,” he said.

Bhattacharya, who was a bit disheartened for obvious reasons, felt that his wards failed to follow his instructions in the match. “We didn’t have enough players on the bench and so I didn’t have the option of making substitutions,” Bhattacharya stated.

He also hoped that IFA would consider his plea for stopping the league temporarily as a bunch of his players will again be pressed into the national service.