Constantine played First Round of World Cup Qualifiers. First Match with Nepal victory 2-0. second game away 0-0 draw. Then in group matches of World Cup Q Seconbd Round, india recorded 1-0 win against Guam.
Well, munna , as you know, (you cannot but know with the fund of knowledge you have at your disposal) in today's world, "marketing is everything" So Consta and Stimac are simply following the trend. The moot question, of course, is whether they are marketing the right thing
As you said, effective football, results, selection of players are the casualties of such marketing ploys. We would do well to remember that the main criminals are AIFF who have hired these people in the first place, who have been entrusted with the task of monitoring them and should hold them accountable if they fail to deliver
Of course Constantine had his own flaws. He was a one dimensional coach with no plan B in his repertoire. He also showed certain favouritism towards and against certain players. Nothing can ever explain the inclusion of Sumit Passi and Bikas Jairu in NT or the exclusion of Romeo fernandes, mandar or Soosairaj (with brandon he had ego issues i think). And of course he lost the dressing room with senior players openly displaying their unhappiness with his tactics.
Having said that, Consti did show the art of working with the available resources and achieving great results. I mean he had to work with technically deficient players so he chose to be pragmatic and adopt a defensive, counter attacking brand of football that relied on players with extreme fitness and stamina who could run for the entire 90 minutes and help in both defence as well as offence. Which is why he chose players kike narayan das, narzary, kotal, Jairu etc. This is btw also the approach followed by Mourinho who dropped Juan Mata from chelsea line up only because he did not do enough defensively (and this was when Mata had been chosen Fan's Player of the Year twine in a row and had 20 plus assists in his last season before Mourinho was reappointed by chelsea).
Similarly Consti played pragmatic football and gave stress on results since there was a raging debate going on at that time - How to make football popular in India: through developing a good domestic league and youth development and creating a dedicated fan base or through the success of NT? One side believed that football can only become popular if clubs get better and the league has better marketing and broadcasting. While the other faction thought that once NT starts to do better more people would be attracted to the game and hence more investment into the league. Aiff Ahose NT success and fifa rankings and thus we climbed to 96 at one point. And amazingly this tactic sort of worked as well. If you remember the sort of excitement and interest the NT generated among press and on social media when it defeated Puerto Rico or thrashed Thailand or drew with China... these results got great coverage in national media as well and indian football got more fans.
I believe had we stuck with Consti even after asian cup, then after achieving the kind of interest generated among public for our NT, Consti would have gradually evolved the playing style to a much more ground passing one and included more technical players in the next stage of NT rebuilding. Already he got the team to play a decent passing game in the asian cup. Under him i believe we could have easily challenged for the no. 2 spot in our group this time around. If only we had given him more time ..
I will any day prefer better ranking and result yielding play at least against saff teams. Having said that I think yes, we can get 7 points this time too.
@Chelseafan - outstanding analysis and thought provoking ideas. The article was awesome. So @Chelseafan how would the performance of INDIA been since May 2019, if we had followed counter attacking style as suggested by you, in your opinion? It would help us to kind of evaluate how things are developing. Thanks buddy...
@Chelseafan - man i was expecting/waiting for your response buddy. You need to help me understand your methodology. Once i understand then i would be able to appreciate the methodology better. Right now i have only changed my mind to support your method. But do not know a whole lot about that. Since you are a firm believer in that approach and seen how indian football has evolved over the years, I would like to hear it from you. Thanks man ...
Comments
As you said, effective football, results, selection of players are the casualties of such marketing ploys. We would do well to remember that the main criminals are AIFF who have hired these people in the first place, who have been entrusted with the task of monitoring them and should hold them accountable if they fail to deliver
Having said that, Consti did show the art of working with the available resources and achieving great results. I mean he had to work with technically deficient players so he chose to be pragmatic and adopt a defensive, counter attacking brand of football that relied on players with extreme fitness and stamina who could run for the entire 90 minutes and help in both defence as well as offence. Which is why he chose players kike narayan das, narzary, kotal, Jairu etc. This is btw also the approach followed by Mourinho who dropped Juan Mata from chelsea line up only because he did not do enough defensively (and this was when Mata had been chosen Fan's Player of the Year twine in a row and had 20 plus assists in his last season before Mourinho was reappointed by chelsea).
Similarly Consti played pragmatic football and gave stress on results since there was a raging debate going on at that time - How to make football popular in India: through developing a good domestic league and youth development and creating a dedicated fan base or through the success of NT? One side believed that football can only become popular if clubs get better and the league has better marketing and broadcasting. While the other faction thought that once NT starts to do better more people would be attracted to the game and hence more investment into the league. Aiff Ahose NT success and fifa rankings and thus we climbed to 96 at one point. And amazingly this tactic sort of worked as well. If you remember the sort of excitement and interest the NT generated among press and on social media when it defeated Puerto Rico or thrashed Thailand or drew with China... these results got great coverage in national media as well and indian football got more fans.
I believe had we stuck with Consti even after asian cup, then after achieving the kind of interest generated among public for our NT, Consti would have gradually evolved the playing style to a much more ground passing one and included more technical players in the next stage of NT rebuilding. Already he got the team to play a decent passing game in the asian cup. Under him i believe we could have easily challenged for the no. 2 spot in our group this time around. If only we had given him more time ..