Erik Paartalu enjoying punditry stint

Australian midfielder moves on after bitter break-up with Bengaluru FC

It's been a big change for Erik Paartalu this past season. He went from the loud and commanding voice in the midfield to an honest and educated one on television. The Australian speaks about moving to commentary, the off season struggles and his point of view of the way his time with Bengaluru FC ended after years of committed service.

How has the move to punditry been?

It is something I didn't really envision, I thought I would be playing for at least another season. I had worked with them a bit before (TV) and I knew I was going to do that later in my career. I thought I would do it for a couple of months and jump back to football. I had three options to move in January, but I didn't take any. My levels have gone down, I’m turning 36 soon and I know my best years are behind me and I still felt I had another year or two, particularly in ISL. I knew in my head that this final year at Bengaluru FC will be my last.

How was it giving your opinion on players who you’ve played with or against?

I found it easy to give feedback to the BFC players. I know the club would have taken it as sour grapes but it was me being comfortable knowing that the players would respect or understand it because I played with them and I know they are better and more capable. And if you watch the progression of my analysis, I was never really negative about the players.

Suresh for example. I know he is capable of more because I played alongside him. Me and Dimas (Delgado) certainly brought him into the environment, made him comfortable, gave the ball and communicated at the right time. I didn’t see that this year. I saw a midfield that was disjointed, that gave him the ball in the wrong areas. It’s also his challenge to be a more mature footballer and think why am I not getting the ball in the right areas, why am I not getting more assists and goals. He has the ability to turn that around.

There is a second season syndrome in India with players…

With players, particularly if you got a two year contract, you always expect in the second season, the player is going to play through the roof to get another contract. In general terms, the ISL season starts in November, you play 6-7 games before January and if you start well you can sign for another team in January for next season. So players can get into a false sense of security and they have their foot off the pedal a little bit, that is just human nature. It’s nice to see players back themselves. Players playing well will know if they are going to get signed at the end of the year. But you risk doing an ACL or breaking your foot, then you have no contract.

The Indian off season is really long…

It's a torture. For those 4 seasons I played at BFC, the first season we had 8 weeks off and came back for the AFC Cup, that was great. The second season we had another AFC Cup in the pre-season which allowed us to come back. Third and fourth season we had something like 5-6 months off and 7 months (with Covid-19) respectively. In Scotland we were playing 45 games a year. In 3-4 years you are playing 150 games and some of these boys in the ISL won’t get to 150 games in their whole ISL career.

I was paying a personal trainer for training (during off season). Foreign boys would come back overweight and out of touch. That has changed now. The Indian boys had more overuse injuries because they had no facilities to train. I think the clubs don’t take enough initiatives to give the players a programme. It is no coincidence that some players break down (with injury).

Your time at Bengaluru FC, it didn’t end very well did it?

It’s never going to sit with me nicely. It was a footballing decision and never about the incident (in Maldives). That was a good opportunity for them to take control of the situation. The thing that happened in Maldives, what was said and what transpired was not the series of events that probably occurred. That’s football, if people or teams don’t want you to be a part of their plan, they will find ways to move you on.

If I was in the country maybe I would have been able to sit down with people but I wasn’t and it became a situation that got completely out of control with the lawyers.

That being said, I had the option to move which I took upon myself to not do. Because I was trying to be loyal to the club, and they were rival clubs and I couldn’t do that to the fans. There was still a possibility to move to another club on deadline day, that did not transpire. The team had started training and I was isolated. They wanted to get their players in and the registration period was coming up so they knew they had to get rid of me. So we came to an agreement and that meant that unfortunately I was stuck between September and January. Then what happened was really nice. The TV company (Star) called me and said we need to work long term. There are people that I will never shake hands with again because there was a way to do things. I look at it as their loss. It was their loss that I didn’t play, or Juanan and (Harmanjot) Khabra didn’t play. Those two played against each other in the final.

What is your opinion on Carles Cuadrat?

He’s the most intelligent and diverse Spanish coach the league has seen. He was able to identify what we had and didn’t have in the squad. The year we won it, he had Gerard Zaragoza as his assistant coach. He has to take a lot of the credit as well. The strongest combination in terms of training and relaying that message daily and video sessions, positivity. They bounced off each other. You need to have a one and a two like that. We knew going into games how many we were going to score today. We had Miku, Dimas, (Albert) Serran, Juanan... You just knew coming out of the training session that we are going to win.

You had great staff. Investment in staff is so important, they make a massive difference. Carles did struggle the year after that, he recognised Jerry (Zaragoza) wasn’t there and he put his own spin on things. Miku wasn’t there and we had to play counter attacking football. With the players we have, this is the way we can play. Too many coaches I have seen here, they don’t want to change. He performed miracles to get us where we did that season. The Covid year, he didn’t have many tools at his disposal, there were players who were not signed correctly, pre-season was just 3 weeks.

(The year BFC won the title) I got injured and missed the final, straight away Carles, they signed Alex (Barrera) to do a job. BFC in recent years, have taken too long to manage a situation.