Blues and AIFF administer in a midst of twitter war

by Chittu Shetty May 31, 2017

Twitter war between club, their fans and board erupts after AIFF administer tweeted an indirect accusation over clubs about player injuries.

Couple of days back an unexpected twitter war between AIFF Administer Kishor Taid and Bengaluru FC management after the former indirectly targeted blues for injuries to Udanta and Sunil Chhetri. “Muscle injuries are not due to weather but poor injury management by the coaching staff. Another blow for the national team,” Kishore Taid, the head of operations and strategy, AIFF, tweeted; indirectly blaming blues for players being doubtful for International duties in Asian Cup qualifier.

This obviously didn’t go down well with Bengaluru FC staff and fans who reverted back questioning the AIFF for poor scheduling and timing of games.  Two weeks back during the federation cup knockout stage, BFC lodged complaints with the AIFF regarding the poor scheduling of the tournament in general and timing of matches in the Cup. Questions were raised over the choice of venue, Cuttack, considering temperatures soar to over 40 degree Celsius in May in the coastal city. Moreover, players had little or no time to recover between games as every club had to play three matches in five days in the group stage.

Parth Jindal, CEO, Bengaluru FC, had written to AIFF president, Praful Patel, secretary Kushal Das and competitions director Anil Kamat, pointing out the “far from ideal playing conditions” and urged the AIFF to re-schedule the final if BFC made the title clash. “In making the semi-finals, Bengaluru FC are playing their fourth game in six days — a schedule that is detrimental to the players’ health to say the least,”

Trying to defend himself, Taid began giving examples of PL clubs has excuses, “PL Clubs play 5 games in 14 days in December. Isn’t football all about adapting to different conditions?” forgetting the fact that clubs in Europe play in much cooler temperature compared to 40 degree in Cuttack while also missing the poor scheduling which meant 4 games in 6 days for blues with three of them 4 PM starts.

Soon expectedly Taid began receiving barrage of tweets from club fans accusing him of lack of empathy for players, as Taid insisted his comment was not directed at any club.

“One thing is clear — you cannot have matches on alternate days,” Mandar Tamhane, chief technical officer of BFC, said on Monday. “You can go into an observatory and say that the temperature is only 38 degree. But the ground temperature was way over 40 (degree). This is not right. May 31 is when the season gets over and considering that the final was held on May 21, the AIFF had almost 10 days in hand to plan the tournament better. Was there any need to schedule back-to-back matches? Moreover, since it’s unbelievably hot at 4 pm, couldn’t the matches have been played at 5 and 8 pm instead? The matches could have been spaced out. If there was a problem with telecasts, then they could have done away with broadcasting the 5 pm game. You need to put your players first.

Also Read: AFC Cup: Blues face Maziya with depleted strike force, Bagan take on Abahani Dhaka

It must be noted that Club captain Sunil Chhetri, who was injured during the federation group stage game against Mohun Bagan in what seemed like a season ending injury also meant to miss India games, has now been deemed fit by the club to play against Maziya. Tamhane added,“We take utmost care of our players and go to great lengths to improve their strength and conditioning. You cannot pinpoint one incident as the reason for an injury, but the scheduling was a factor. I usually don’t respond to such silly things but it had to be done. I am assuming that he has got better knowledge (of the ground situation) than the club itself.”

Taid continued to clarify further as he tweeted, “No it (schedule) was not ideal, But no better venue or window was available given the cramped calendar”, which only raised the question of poor management from the board side. In an attempt to rectify himself, Taid tweeted, “Swimming against the tide of Bengaluru FC fans. Good to see the support. I am myself big fan of their achievements” But by then damage had already been done.