Igor Stimac slams AIFF for imprisoning Indian football

All India Football Federation is not new to criticism and in the classic case of employees going against employers, former Indian coach Igor Stimac lashed out at the federation for poor management and selfish motives in a virtual press conference on Friday.

The AIFF terminated Stimac's contract following a series of poor results and all hell broke loose with Stimac coming out in public calling out the poor decision-making and unprofessionalism of AIFF.

Talking about the condition of Indian football, Stimac said," I love this country and I came here with open arms. But the Indian football is imprisoned and it is imprisoned by AIFF."

"Poor decision making, big and empty words, and focus on creating an image rather than working for football has harmed Indian football," Stimac added further.

Poor management by AIFF

Igor claimed that despite him being the head coach, AIFF didn't consult him before accepting International matches for the national team.

"The president and federation accepted International matches for the senior team without ever consulting me. Not even a phone call was made to me," said Stimac.

"They accepted the King's Cup and Merdeka Cup without consulting me and those two tournaments hurt the team," he added further.

Igor Stimac went further and accused AIFF of changing the team list for the Asian Games 2023 in Chin and adding three senior players from their side.

"When the participation for Asian Games was finalized, I sent a list full of youngsters and it was appreciated by ISL coaches too. But President Kalyan Chaubey and AIFF convinced Sports Authority of India (SAI) to add the senior players to the team," he said.

"And the travel condition to China is not unknown to the Indian fans and media," he added further.

Big but empty words from AIFF

When the new AIFF management under new administrators came into power, they entered with pomp and show criticizing the old regime of corruption. But if one has to believe Igor Stimac, the new management throws big words and false promises around.

"For WCQ, we were promised chartered flights but nothing happened. But it was just a positive PR exercise of social media," said Stimac.

India was the only team that participated in the 2023 Asian Cup with a GPS vest which is extremely crucial for tracking the movements of the players while training.

"I even offered to buy the GPS vests with my own money but I was promised that AIFF would take care of it. But those were empty words and nothing else," said Stimac.

He further accused AIFF of not providing him with resources for analytics.

"Throughout we were renting match analysts from Goa...we were stealing the platforms from Goa FC, that's how we were working," said Stimac.

Stimac claimed that administrators in AIFF are working for their good and that Indian football is suffering because of them.

While Stimac has opened a can of worms with his statements, Indian football fans know this mess and they recognize it from past decades. Stimac's claims might be one-sided at the moment but they expose the wrongdoings and incompetency of the top brass of All India Football Federation.