THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: On the eve of a major international football tournament, one would expect all the talk to be about the game itself. However, that is far from the case as the ball gets rolling in the SAFF Championship 2015 with Nepal taking on Sri Lanka at the Greenfield International Stadium, Kariavattom, here on Wednesday.
India head coach Stephen Constantine was forced to wait in a hotel lobby for five-and-a-half fours before he checked into a room. Coach and players of the Nepal national team are yet to catch a glimpse of the match venue while Afghanistan coach Petar Segrt says the only good thing he has experienced in India so far is the people of the country.
“It’s a disgrace. You simply cannot bring seven international teams together and not have training pitches and adequate facilities. It’s like we don’t know why we are here,” Constantine hit out at the organisers. “The South Asian Football Federation needs to take a look at themselves, because every SAFF I have been involved in has been utter chaos,” the Englishman who coaches hosts India added.
Segrt, his counterpart at defending champions Afghanistan, felt that something needs to change in India. “We have faced big problems already and everybody is aware of it. At the moment, we have to accept his. But the coaches need to speak to the association so that in the long run, we can change this,” said the former Georgia coach.
“The buses are coming late for training. Sometimes my players have to move out of their rooms because other teams want the rooms. We cannot train because opposition teams are training nearby us. But for me the biggest problem was sometimes people record videos of our training. No coach will be happy when there or four cameras at you for the full training session,” said Segrt who was appointed last month.
Coaches of Nepal and Sri Lanka who will face each other in the opening day fixture in Group A also reflected similar issues. Nepal head coach Patrick Aussems questioned the facilities provided to them by the organisers. “Every other team has been allotted five-star hotels, but ours is a ‘bed and breakfast’,” said the former the former Belgian footballer.
“Every team has had problems and we have also had our fair share,” said Aussems. “I’m late here because the organisers took me to the wrong hotel. We have not even been able to see the stadium once, let alone use it for training,” the former Standard Liege player said.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan coach Sampath Perera said his players are not in the best of their morale after spending two weeks in the capital city. “So far it has been very difficult. One day we are in one hotel and the organisers say we can move to a better one. All players vacate, pack their bags and wait in the reception when the news come we can only move out the next day,” Perera disclosed his bitter experiences.