Shame on you ANFA

Finally, much   to   our relief   the   AFC Challenge Cup nightmare is over.  A crest-fallen and demoralized Team Nepal’s hugely disappointing run   came to a close on a disastrous note in Kathmandu recently.

Not surprisingly Turkmenistan had few problems dispatching the opposition that was down in the dumps.  The Central Asian outfit   completed a 3-0 drubbing to compound the home side’s misery further.

Coach Roberts’   boys failed to put up even a semblance of fight, and they crashed to another spineless defeat, the third in a row.   This is one of the national team’s worst performances in recent memory at home, and we definitely would not like to remember and talk about it.

For die- hard fans like me the team’s   abject failure in the competition   is a   shocker   and   a bitter pill to take. Apart from finishing at the bottom of the group, they failed to score a single goal.

Apparently, all hell broke loose after the team lost to Maldives in a must win situation. During the course   of   the match the needless and unprofessional intervention by All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) to substitute player of their choice did not go down well with Coach Roberts.

When we have an experienced professional coach in charge of the team, he knows exactly what he is doing or what needs be done. To me   this kind of intervention   is   totally illogical and incorrect.  The   interference   was ill- timed   and it created more problems for the team eventually.

Then  two key players of the national team belonging to Nepal Army  gets  whisked away from their hotel room by representatives of Nepal Army prior to the game against Turkmenistan,  further depleting the team. What a joke!

I feel sorry for Coach Roberts and his boys for having to go through a dramatic turn of events that had them helpless against the ropes.

The   axe   did   fall on Coach Roberts, which I   pretty much anticipated. Had he not voluntarily quit, ANFA   would have terminated his contract to save its own skin. Like always the blame started and ended with him.

Let us not forget that the football body largely contributed to the debacle, something   they will never admit it.

As the old saying goes,”Old habits never die”, they are masters at making others scapegoats whenever the team performs poorly.

Coach Roberts   did his very best to help Nepali football under challenging circumstances in his short tenure.  He did a wonderful job at preparing the national team for the SAFF Championship. He was the architect   of the four nation Asian tour undertaken by the team.

I wish he had pressurized ANFA to prepare the team for the AFC Challenge Cup on the same line.  Ganesh Thapa and company   literally ignored it, plain and simple.  A good preparation certainly could   have made a vast difference.

ANFA spent   millions on the competition and was focused like a laser on FIFA boss Seep Blatter’s visit. Ironically, they preferred to have the team trained in their own backyards and play warm up matches   against local outfits.

Back to the AFC tournament,   our boys failed to live up to the hyped expectations created for them, following their respectable showing   at the   SAFF Championship in New Delhi, India last year.

The onus was on them to prove that they were capable of more.  The opportunity was there, but they were unable   to seize it.  Instead   they   played very   poorly   and failed to deliver the results.

Given the   present state of Nepali football, I don’t see how we can become competitive at the international level.

The   seventeen year   old  Ganesh  Thapa  led  ANFA  must make way for able, honest and  professional  people  to  step into their shoes. Enough is enough.