PANAJI: After taking India to the Asian Cup 2023, national football coach Igor Stimac has put forward an ambitious set of ideas. His words have become the big talking point, but with his contract running out in September, it remains to be seen whether the Croatian coach, a bronze medal winner at the World Cup in 1998, gets to see the proposed changes.
Excerpts from an exclusive interview with TOI…
You have demanded longer season, more matches for players, expanded ISL with promotion-relegation and I-League without foreigners. It’s all well-meaning, but is it expecting too much too soon?
If we stick together, anything is possible. These are not new things that I am asking. When I was signed as the national team coach, it was because AIFF trusted me and my understanding of world football. I speak now with the same responsibilities of making India a better football nation. I said a lot of things at the press conference, lot of headlines, but not a single mention where I thanked all stakeholders for the good that was being done. I feel bad about that. I’ve been here for three years and I knew what was happening previously. Before coming to India, I was excited because I know AIFF has done so much to bring changes. All credit goes to president (Praful Patel), (general secretary) Kushal Das and (director, national teams) Abhishek (Yadav). The under-17 World Cup was brought to India for boys and girls, and not everyone can do that. Then you have FSDL and ISL, financing AIFF with big amounts and supporting changes. The question is can it be more? Yes, and it should be much more in the future, if they stick together as partners.
After qualification, you were critical of many things. What prompted such an outburst?
My intention is never to hurt anyone. There are things that need to be changed so that the national team has a better future. I don’t won’t anyone to feel as if I am pointing fingers. The truth is everyone is trying to do its best, but we need to understand that other countries are going forward quicker than us and, in that sense, we need to wake up.
India won all three games in the Asian Cup qualifiers, but it came against lower-ranked opposition. India were expected to win these games. Do you agree?
I don’t consider this a great achievement. The reason is simple: India qualified for the last Asian Cup, so it was expected from our side to qualify. What we are all proud of is the way we did it, with very convincing performances. This is what I meant when I said we need more time (for preparations). This is proof that if we spend time together, we can make the nation proud.
Your contract with the AIFF ends in September. Will you wait till then for clarity or move on, if talks are not initiated?
I don’t know what’s going to happen (beyond September) but I expect the CoA (committee of administrators) to call me and discuss what is needed for the national team, immediately. We need immediate reaction. We need meetings. I have information that this meeting (with CoA) will happen next week. We will discuss everything. We need to schedule games for March (window) and also look at games in September. We need to start planning the camp in April which will be six to eight weeks prior to the Asian Cup.
Are you looking at options beyond India?
I do have offers on the table and will wait till July, not longer than that. I will respect everything what we have done. I will respect the great support I had from AIFF, particularly Patel, Kushal, Abhishek and the organisation. Whoever is there now, or whoever will be there next, I respect the institution. But I cannot afford to wait for a very long time. The offers are there till teams start pre-season, and if I don’t accept now, I will have to wait for mid-season or longer when teams make changes (for poor performance). It’s not the ideal situation to take over. If I take something now, it will be in my hands to choose the players I want, have the pre-season the way I want. That’s why I am keen that the future is sorted (with India).
You fielded six under-23 players for the Asian Cup qualifiers in the starting 11, a rarity for the senior team…
Everything is going as we planned. Giving all these young players a chance to mature quicker, to appear in the senior national team sooner was to provide them with enough self-belief and confidence to do well when it was most needed. We did suffer as a consequence of pushing so many youngsters forward sooner, but now we are getting the rewards. I have said before that through this process, there will be some sufferings. We suffer because of not enough experience, because of not enough self-belief from the experienced ones about the changes we make, the game style we choose. But by the time everything settled down, we did really well.
You spoke earlier of longer camps resulting in better performances. But how feasible is it to always have longer camps in the middle of club engagements?
It’s very possible. Instead of having four days prior to the match, we need two weeks and that’s not a big change with regards to the actual calendar. We need to make sure in September that the national team gets enough time for proper preparations. If we choose better-ranked teams, then we need to make sure that we prepare well to go out and perform better.
Next season there is the Durand Cup, ISL and Super Cup, which means more games and a longer season. Isn’t that good to start with?
This was supposed to happen two years ago. There was already an agreed calendar. The AIFF had approved camp for national team for April and May in 2020 where we were supposed to travel to Turkey and Croatia and there were 10 games lined up. That didn’t happen. Many plans were destroyed for nobody’s fault. The last two years were all about surviving.
What kind of preparations are you looking at ahead of the Asian Cup, which is less than a year away?
What I expect is very similar to what we had now, minimum seven weeks, but this time I hope there will be no problem with players being involved in AFC competitions. Most of the players joined us in the middle of the camp or very late. That disturbed our work. You could see, for such reasons, most of the players from Mumbai City and ATK Mohun Bagan were not there for our games.
Excerpts from an exclusive interview with TOI…
You have demanded longer season, more matches for players, expanded ISL with promotion-relegation and I-League without foreigners. It’s all well-meaning, but is it expecting too much too soon?
If we stick together, anything is possible. These are not new things that I am asking. When I was signed as the national team coach, it was because AIFF trusted me and my understanding of world football. I speak now with the same responsibilities of making India a better football nation. I said a lot of things at the press conference, lot of headlines, but not a single mention where I thanked all stakeholders for the good that was being done. I feel bad about that. I’ve been here for three years and I knew what was happening previously. Before coming to India, I was excited because I know AIFF has done so much to bring changes. All credit goes to president (Praful Patel), (general secretary) Kushal Das and (director, national teams) Abhishek (Yadav). The under-17 World Cup was brought to India for boys and girls, and not everyone can do that. Then you have FSDL and ISL, financing AIFF with big amounts and supporting changes. The question is can it be more? Yes, and it should be much more in the future, if they stick together as partners.
After qualification, you were critical of many things. What prompted such an outburst?
My intention is never to hurt anyone. There are things that need to be changed so that the national team has a better future. I don’t won’t anyone to feel as if I am pointing fingers. The truth is everyone is trying to do its best, but we need to understand that other countries are going forward quicker than us and, in that sense, we need to wake up.
India won all three games in the Asian Cup qualifiers, but it came against lower-ranked opposition. India were expected to win these games. Do you agree?
I don’t consider this a great achievement. The reason is simple: India qualified for the last Asian Cup, so it was expected from our side to qualify. What we are all proud of is the way we did it, with very convincing performances. This is what I meant when I said we need more time (for preparations). This is proof that if we spend time together, we can make the nation proud.
Your contract with the AIFF ends in September. Will you wait till then for clarity or move on, if talks are not initiated?
I don’t know what’s going to happen (beyond September) but I expect the CoA (committee of administrators) to call me and discuss what is needed for the national team, immediately. We need immediate reaction. We need meetings. I have information that this meeting (with CoA) will happen next week. We will discuss everything. We need to schedule games for March (window) and also look at games in September. We need to start planning the camp in April which will be six to eight weeks prior to the Asian Cup.
Are you looking at options beyond India?
I do have offers on the table and will wait till July, not longer than that. I will respect everything what we have done. I will respect the great support I had from AIFF, particularly Patel, Kushal, Abhishek and the organisation. Whoever is there now, or whoever will be there next, I respect the institution. But I cannot afford to wait for a very long time. The offers are there till teams start pre-season, and if I don’t accept now, I will have to wait for mid-season or longer when teams make changes (for poor performance). It’s not the ideal situation to take over. If I take something now, it will be in my hands to choose the players I want, have the pre-season the way I want. That’s why I am keen that the future is sorted (with India).
You fielded six under-23 players for the Asian Cup qualifiers in the starting 11, a rarity for the senior team…
Everything is going as we planned. Giving all these young players a chance to mature quicker, to appear in the senior national team sooner was to provide them with enough self-belief and confidence to do well when it was most needed. We did suffer as a consequence of pushing so many youngsters forward sooner, but now we are getting the rewards. I have said before that through this process, there will be some sufferings. We suffer because of not enough experience, because of not enough self-belief from the experienced ones about the changes we make, the game style we choose. But by the time everything settled down, we did really well.
You spoke earlier of longer camps resulting in better performances. But how feasible is it to always have longer camps in the middle of club engagements?
It’s very possible. Instead of having four days prior to the match, we need two weeks and that’s not a big change with regards to the actual calendar. We need to make sure in September that the national team gets enough time for proper preparations. If we choose better-ranked teams, then we need to make sure that we prepare well to go out and perform better.
Next season there is the Durand Cup, ISL and Super Cup, which means more games and a longer season. Isn’t that good to start with?
This was supposed to happen two years ago. There was already an agreed calendar. The AIFF had approved camp for national team for April and May in 2020 where we were supposed to travel to Turkey and Croatia and there were 10 games lined up. That didn’t happen. Many plans were destroyed for nobody’s fault. The last two years were all about surviving.
What kind of preparations are you looking at ahead of the Asian Cup, which is less than a year away?
What I expect is very similar to what we had now, minimum seven weeks, but this time I hope there will be no problem with players being involved in AFC competitions. Most of the players joined us in the middle of the camp or very late. That disturbed our work. You could see, for such reasons, most of the players from Mumbai City and ATK Mohun Bagan were not there for our games.
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