Police complaint could have been avoided: Bhutia
Lodging a police complaint against Chennaiyin FC’s marquee player Elano Blumer could have been avoided, said Bhaichung Bhutia. The former India captain, who is now advisor to the president of the All India Football Federation (AIFF), said such incidents should be resolved on the field of play or in the dressing room.
“Some pushing and shoving might happen after a match, especially after one as intense as Sunday’s final. But it should never have escalated to a level that a player would need to be taken to the police station,” Bhutia told HT over the phone from Mumbai on Monday. “It is now for the league to take a stand.”
Goa had once earlier contemplated seeking police help over an altercation involving one of its officials with the technical staff of another Indian Super League (ISL) team, a source in the league said on Monday. That was last year, the source said, but the team didn’t go ahead because the senior management at the franchise ignored this suggestion as one made in the heat of the moment. Also, the FC Goa official involved in the altercation had dismissed the idea as absurd.
No one in football administration HT spoke to could recall seeing Shrinivas Dempo as angry as he was after the match. Co-owner Dattaraj Salgaocar was quoted in sections of the media as saying that the match was rigged. The FC Goa team skipped the post-match presentation and the after-match media conference, and piecing together various strands of information by speaking to football officials, it seemed like a culmination of a number of reasons.
“Ticket distribution before the final was an issue. Tickets reached the owners really late, meaning they couldn’t pass it on to the ministers and senior officials as well as they would have liked to. The matter was compounded by Saturday being a holiday in Goa,” said an FC Goa official requesting anonymity because he isn’t authorised to speak to the media. Logistics for all games are the home team’s responsibility but the final belongs to the ISL. “Then, at least one senior bureaucrat was prevented from entering the ground after the final; this while there were so many from Chennaiyin FC on the pitch. Moreover, Zico had been earlier sanctioned by the league for criticising the refereeing. All of this may have come together in that moment after a match they came so close to winning,” said an official with a Goa football club, who too declined to be named given the sensitive nature of the issue.