Time to overhaul faulty club football system, says Igor Stimac

After an encouraging end to the King’s Cup where India finished at the third place by beating Thailand, an air of optimism had taken over the fans ahead of the Intercontinental Cup. However, the Blue Tigers succumbed to a 2-4 defeat against Tajikistan on Sunday to highlight the fact that they were far from a ready team.

And while Stimac didn’t hesitate to point out the mistakes that his boys did, he also went onto blame the Indian Super League and I-League for not helping out the players as the system needed a big overhaul. He pointed out the lack of games the players have in a year, which has been a huge problem.

“We are suffering because most our Indian strikers are not playing regularly in the ISL or the I-League as they spend most of the time on bench. Most of them do not have open place to play and that is not good for me (as the national coach) because there is only Sunil (Chhetri) who is scoring goals,” said the Croatian, reported Sportstar.

“That is a big problem for us and we need to think of ways to sort out the situation as we cannot always expect Sunil to decide a game. We need more strikers playing in the ISL or I-League. I cannot create a centre-forward from a full-back in the national team. They need to play more in the country’s leagues to make a strong national side,” Stimac added.

While the above problem would be a slow and long-term process to get solved, Stimac would need to implement his approach on players fast with the World Cup qualifiers scheduled in September and October.

“The results will suffer as we are taking a new approach to the game and playing a totally different football from what we did before. We have a lot of young talents who make mistakes but I need to back them to make sure that India enjoys its football in future,” Stimac said.