At 30, Ashutosh Mehta finally gets a chance to wear the blue jersey

Mumbai’s Ashutosh Mehta has mixed feelings on his maiden call-up to the Indian national team at the age of 30, coming after almost a decade of grinding it out in domestic club football.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Mehta said. “Since the beginning I have worked for this. It has always been my ultimate goal and I wouldn’t have stopped working for it even if it was meant to happen later. But better late than never to have a chance to make my team and country proud.”

The right-back is part of the national squad set to play two international friendlies in Dubai—against Oman on Thursday and the UAE on Monday.

Mehta, a two-time I-League winner with Aizawl FC and Mohun Bagan, had an impressive 2020-21 Indian Super League (ISL) season for NorthEast United FC, playing a key role in his team's 10-game unbeaten run to the play-offs with 62 tackles, 23 interceptions as well as one goal and a couple of assists. The Mumbai-based defender was diagnosed with Covid-19 in September last year, undergoing a month of isolation before joining his team pre-season.

“I have been a part of many fairytales and I hope this one is the most special of them all,” Mehta said from Dubai about finally breaking into the national set-up.

His football path had no fairytale beginning though; Mehta was one of the many football-loving kids in Mumbai—bunking classes, borrowing a pair of shoes from his friends and going for trials of various clubs. The first concrete step came when he was signed up by the now-defunct Mumbai FC in 2010.

“My parents were tense about what I would make out of my life,” Mehta said. “It was a big relief when I officially joined Mumbai FC. It took a lot of hard work, dedication, commitment to stay at it and work on being better every single day to get the opportunities along the way.”

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Those came through a lot of clubs across both I-League and ISL post his Mumbai FC days: Pune City, Mumbai City FC, Aizawl FC, ATK, Mohun Bagan and most recently NorthEast United. The most crucial of those moves was when Mehta left Mumbai to head to Mizoram and play for Aizawl under the mentorship of coach Khalid Jamil, under whom he also played at Mumbai FC. Mehta called it the "hardest decision I ever took", but one that earned him, and his rookie team, a first title in the 2016-17 I-League season.

Injured and out of favour after the 2018-19 ISL season with Pune City, Mehta's career appeared to be in a fix in his late twenties. Struggling to find a team, Mohun Bagan came with an offer which the Mumbaikar lapped up. The move again ended with Mehta winning his second I-League title last year.

However, in all these years of triumph and turbulence and jumping from one club to another, the wait for that elusive national call-up remained a constant for Mehta. “There were times it would get difficult and I had questions,” he said. “But winning almost fairytale-like titles and the love and support that I received from fans of the respective clubs was a key reason that kept me motivated. My family too believed in me and supported me from the start. I owe my success to my mom.”

And to Jamil. The Mumbai-based coach—who stole the limelight this season by becoming the first Indian to take an ISL team to the play-offs as an interim manager of NorthEast United—was at the helm during critical junctures of Mehta’s career: at Mumbai FC, Aizawl FC and NorthEast United in the just-concluded ISL season.

“Whatever I am as a player today, due credit goes to Khalid bhai. With his constant guidance throughout my career, I have never looked back. From fighting relegation during their Mumbai FC days and to lifting the I-League trophy together with Aizawl FC and now with NorthEast, it’s been wonderful,” Mehta said.

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