Fredy Mascarenhas

Fredy Mascarenhas was born on 11 April 1981 in Cuncolim, Goa, India. He started his liking of the game football at a young age after seeing his neighbour and good friend Siano Fernandes who played for Dempo.[1] At the age of 13 he joined his local school football team at Our Lady of Health High School in which he also played in the Subroto Mukerjee Cup.[1] At the same time, Mascarenhas played for his village team in the Goan inter-village tournaments at the under-14 and u-16 levels. Seeing his attitude and skill, his coach, Levino Dias, urged him to give football a serious thought as a career.[1] He then signed up to join the Salgaocar S.C. under-19 side and at the same time played for lower division Goan clubs like Cuncolim Union and Raitura SC.[1] While at Salgaocar, he was trained under former u-19 coach Derrick Pereira, who is currently the head coach of Pune FC. After two seasons, Fredy joined first division Goan club Colva Sports Club, helping them get promoted to the professional league. While at Salgaocar, Mascarenhas suffered an accident which kept him out of football for a year.[1] He made a comeback the following season and scored in the first match with the first touch against Churchill brothers. He represented Goa for the Santosh trophy where he was the highest scorer and also became the first player from Goa to score a double hat-trick in a single match against Tripura. He retired from football in July 2009 after winning the Santosh trophy with Goa for the second time, thus leaving Indian football on a high note. He had missed some opportunities to represent Goa in junior age-level tournaments due to personal reasons.

Fredy was part of the Indian national football team during their tour to Canada under coach Bob Houghton and was donning Jersey no. 18. He was also part of the Indian team for their World cup 2010 qualifying matches against Saudi Arabia(home and away). He have even attended National camp under Ex-Indian national team coach Stephen Constantine.[6]