Indian goalkeeper Subrata Paul's four-day trial with Vancouver Whitecaps ended in disappointment with the Canadian football club deciding against offering him a contract.
"The final decision of the Club was not to offer a contract to Subrata as they would like to use the foreign slot to acquire a player who could start for the team," Paul's manager Arvind Narayan said in a statement.
Paul, who plays for Pune FC in the domestic I-League, arrived in Canada last week and has been giving trials for the Whitecaps.
"After 4 days of trial with the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, The technical team believed that Subrata Paul was as good as their second goalkeeper and had shown a lot of promise during the training sessions with the team," Narayan said.
The goalkeeper's manager said the Whitecaps found Paul to be a promising player but stopped short of taking him on the roster.
"The club believes that if given better playing conditions and higher competitive matches, Subrata would show drastic improvement as a goalkeeper," he said.
"The club will still keep a track of Subrata's progress in the future. The staff made all possible efforts to make Subrata's visit to Vancouver most comfortable and convenient and he very much appreciated the Vancouver team for giving him the trial opportunity," he added.
Paul rose to prominence with Kolkata's Mohun Bagan. He has made 30 national appearances and was part of the Indian team that won the Nehru Cup for the first time in 2007.
The 23-year-old idolises Italian Gianluigi Buffon.
Indians have been trying to make a mark at the international level and striker Sunil Chettri has in fact managed to get a contract with the Major League Soccer side Kansas City Wizards.
