Igor Stimac was appointed as the head coach of the Indian men’s national team on 15 May 2019 and his contract has been extended till September 2022. The Croatian recently won his maiden trophy with the team as India clinched their 8th SAFF Championship title. Incidentally, India are on an unbeaten streak of 9 matches, with five wins and four draws, their second best unbeaten run in over a decade.
Those are statistics.
The truth is that India’s victory has come against the lower order teams.
Stimac argued that patience is key and that once a compromise is reached, the team will deliver results.
“Media, fans want everything to change quickly but national team coaches cannot buy players so we have to follow a process. In that process we have to suffer, we have to go through this phase.”
“When I took the job two and a half years ago, we started to rebuild the game from day one because we chose more technical football, football with more balls, we picked more technical players. So the technical committee, That includes most of the former players, knew how much we would suffer in the process. I am grateful for their support,” Stimac said.
When some players were asked about playing poorly and not getting enough performance in their desired position, Stimac raised the issue of number of games.
“The pandemic is going on, we cannot count on a season that will last for eight-nine months. This is the biggest problem,” said the Croatian.
“Our last ISL season was supposed to start in August and end in May. It would have been wonderful. The players who come to the national camps during the off-season are not great at all. We have to work on his fitness and not focus on the tactical part. Hopefully this changes soon and we can have normal weather like other countries.”
Stimac drew comparisons with India’s Asian neighbours, saying the World Cup may be far away.
“We have to keep our internal competition on the same level as the best Asian countries. Same quality of academies and equal amounts of investment. China is investing billions of dollars in football, they have five million kids in structured academies, thousands in those academies.” And there are thousands of foreign coaches and still, that is not enough. They are trying to qualify for the World Cup and they don’t think it will happen. If we are dreaming of qualifying for the World Cup then this one There is a huge process and other countries are doing more than us in every aspect in this regard. But we must support the process,” Stimac said.
With talks about the biennial World Cup looming, Stimac said he would like to know if FIFA is looking for “more funding”, but added that he would support the idea if it helps India.
“As India coach, I would like to have (World Cup every two years). I will support it because it can hopefully benefit India more in the near future (to be able to play in the World Cup),” Stimac said during a virtual interaction after India’s SAFF Championship title. Football needs to develop in the World Cup and to do that we need to open the World Cup to countries that have never participated in them. It is very easy to find your chance in the World Cup after having tournaments every two years. “
“But if the reason (behind the plan) is mainly money for the organization (FIFA), I don’t see any benefit. I’d like to hear a good explanation of what’s behind this move. We need to be realistic here. What is the need. What are the main reasons behind this move. Is it more money for the organization (FIFA) or something else?” the 54-year-old asked.
Stimac, however, acknowledged that winning the SAFF Championship was not a “special success”, but aimed at performing in the 2023 Asian Cup qualification, emphasizing the need for ‘substantial time’ to prepare.
“We don’t know yet who we’re going to play with, we don’t know our group yet. But we need to prepare ourselves because we have been told that our first match will be on February 1.
“If we are going to be successful in this qualifiers which are games to be played outside the FIFA window, we need to sit down with other stakeholders in domestic competitions, how much time will the national team players get to prepare,” he said. “
His immediate job is with the under-23 national team for the 2022 Asian Under-23 Championship qualifiers, which will take place in the UAE from 25 to 31 October.
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