I-league foreigners seeking flight home
nKOLKATA: It’s frustrating, says Dave Robertson. “We sleep long to kill time. It is almost like being in prison.”
Through three seasons as Real Kashmir FC coach, Robertson has seen matches being deferred due to bad weather; a team refusing to travel to Srinagar and a home game being shifted to New Delhi, both in the wake of the Pulwama attack; an internet lockdown that meant he and his players couldn’t talk to folks at home for weeks; playing the Durand Cup after one training session and then using the hospitality of Indian Super League teams for friendlies and to train because it was impossible to do either in Srinagar.
But nothing comes close to this. “Through all that, we would train, travel, think and talk about games. Now, no one talks about football. It is about: how do we get home, can we get home? Ups and downs, more downs than ups,” says the 51-year-old Scot.
In Kolkata, Kibu Vicuna sounds agitated. “I don’t understand why they are waiting to take a decision. Football is important but it is not the most important thing now. We are the champions; no team can mathematically
Foreigners in I-leagues (Div I, II)
Trinidad and Tobago Nigeria
Ghana reach us. So I don’t understand why they are not taking the decision,” says Mohun Bagan’s Spanish coach.
The ‘decision’ Vicuna, 48, was referring to was the All India Football Federation (AIFF) not voiding the I-league as a consequence of Covid-19 which has led to a lockdown till May 3. That is expected on Saturday over one month after the last top tier game and 39 days after Mohun Bagan reached an unassailable 39 points in the 2019-20 edition.
“The game against Aizawl feels like two years ago,” says Vicuna, talking about the match
Ivory Coast on March 10 that sealed the top spot. Because the AIFF has not yet decided on the fate of I-league’s two divisions, most of the 74 foreign players, five foreign coaches and foreigners in the support staff are still in India. No other sport has as many in India now.
CHANCE MISSED
“We had the possibility two weeks ago to go to Spain. The embassies prepared flights from Delhi and Goa. The German embassy even organised one from Kolkata and the French embassy one from Delhi. We couldn’t go because we are professionals and had to wait for the decision of the federation,” says Vicuna.
“On Thursday, the Spanish embassy contacted us and we had to answer that on April 16 there is no official decision of the federation. So what can we do? Now I don’t know if we have the possibility to go home.”
Vicuna’s parents live in Spain and his wife in Poland. “I would like to go to Poland though I don’t know how,” he says.
The uncertainty got to Mohun Bagan midfielder Fran Gonzalez, one of the 11 Spaniards in the I-league, who took to Twitter on April 10 asking Air India for a way out after the airline cancelled tickets for March 19. “After three weeks and more than 20 emails you didn’t give me any solution yet,” he wrote.
Robertson, wife Kim, their son Mason, who plays for Real Kashmir, and two more from United Kingdom are waiting for repatriation flights either from Amritsar or New Delhi which will also require permission to cross inter-state borders now sealed across India.
“To be honest, I don’t know if we are going to get out or when we are going to get out,” says the coach.
Robertson said they were overlooked for flights on April 13 and on April 16 and are now waiting for “that phone or e-mail. The hard part is sometimes that the internet is not strong enough to receive e-mails.”
AFRICANS WORSE OFF
It is worse for players from Africa—33 of who have been registered this term; four with Real Kashmir—says Robertson. “The extension of the lockdown will make it very difficult for those guys to get out.”
“I have not contacted my embassy since it is difficult to travel now. I still don’t know how to plan because I do not know when we can travel,” says Senegalese striker Papa Babacar Diawara, who scored Mohun Bagan’s match-winner against Aizawl FC, the 1-0 win sealing the green-and-maroons’ second I-league title.
“We miss living as we want to, going out with family and going to training,” says Diawara, 32.
The ‘Toilet Roll Challenge’, streaming movies, watching old games, getting some writing done between grocery visits and domestic chores are how days go by for most of them. Video calls home too are a must—vicuna says he speaks to his wife three or four times daily and once with his parents; Diawara does that once every day—as they wait to leave on a jet plane.