Teams slam “poor organisation” of SAFF Championship
The organisers of the 11th South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship, which is scheduled to kick off on Wednesday evening, were left red faced on Tuesday evening after all the teams of the tournament slammed the poor lodging arrangements by the organising body.
“If you ask me what is wrong with the organisation, I will say everything is wrong. Nothing is right here. I had to wait for hours at the reception to get my room. It has been absolute chaos. I’ve been involved in couple of SAFF events and it has been the same every time. We need to organise better, we need to think about the players,”India coach Stephen Constantine told media.
As per media reports, the Nepal coach could not even make it to the pre-match press conference with the organisers taking him to a different place.
The teams are also facing a lot of problems with regard to travel, food and even on training grounds.
“Sometimes we had to wait 45 minutes for our bus. Sometimes we had to shift from our hotel rooms because someone else had booked into our rooms earlier. Sometimes we couldn't train properly because another team was training at the same venue. But the biggest problem happens when you find someone shooting your closed-door training session and making a movie out of it,” Afghanistan coach Petar Segrt was quoted saying. (Read: Club vs Country – FC Goa refuses to send players to SAFF cup even post-ISL)