Officials Like India’s Potential
The next potential soccer giant is a sleeping giant, according to soccer officials who this week visited India, the second-most populous country in the world.
“India has a large pool of soccer players and the sport has a long history in this country,” Paul Mony Samuel, who is coordinating a FIFA project to promote soccer in developing countries, told Associated Press. “It just needs to reorient itself. The leading clubs need to be encouraged to lay stress on their youth programs.”
Samuel is part of a team studying the status of Indian soccer, which was one of Asia’s leading powers until the 1970s.
India won the Asian games in 1951 and 1962 and made it to the semifinals of the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
India has been an afterthought in its continent of late, though.
Samuel said that India’s decline is in part because of the country’s best teams “poaching” players from smaller clubs and not developing new talent.
He suggested a countrywide program to encourage youths to participate in the game.
“At the moment,” Samuel said, “too little is being done by too few people here.”
Alex Soosay, a senior official from the Asian Football Confederation, joined Samuel on the tour and scolded India, telling reporters that the country needs to “wake up from the slumber of the last three decades” and “adopt a more professional outlook” toward soccer.
“India remains a high-potential country,” Soosay said. “Ours is a mission to reinvent Indian soccer. You’ve seen what South Korea, Japan and China have achieved in recent years.
“[India] can be at par with the best and [women’s soccer] has scope for tremendous growth.”
Arsenal Takes Financial Pounding
Premier League and FA Cup champion Arsenal said Monday that it had lost $33.88 million) in the last financial year and blamed it on an increase in player wages.
“The new players added to the squad in preseason ... meant our playing staff was 71 compared to 63 for the previous year,” Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood told Associated Press. “We also negotiated new contract terms with a number of first-team players and team management.
“We are actively pursuing a policy to control and reduce our wage bill while maintaining a playing squad capable of bringing further trophies back.”
The financial losses were caused by a $32.02-million increase in player wages with the acquisitions of Sol Campbell, Francis Jeffers, Richard Wright and Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
In attempting to curb its losses, Arsenal has released Wright and allowed Lee Dixon, Gilles Grimandi and Junichi Inamoto to leave, and longtime captain Tony Adams retired.
A $23.1-million stadium project also contributed to Arsenal’s financial woes.
More Power to Sermanni as Coach
Tom Sermanni, an assistant with the San Jose CyberRays of the WUSA, was named coach of the New York Power on Wednesday. Sermanni replaces interim coach Charlie Duccilli, who took over for the fired Pat Farmer.
The Power finished last in the eight-team WUSA this season, going 2-1-9 under Farmer and 1-8 under Duccilli.
Last year, the Power went 7-5-5 and advanced to the playoffs.
Nyet Go for Sychyov
Russian striker Dmitry Sychyov, a rising star in his country’s soccer program, will not play for the Russian national team in its opening European Championship qualifier against Ireland on Saturday after Coach Valery Gazzayev blasted Sychyov’s physical and psychological conditioning.
“If a player lacks in playing practice, his physical condition does not allow him to play for the national team,” Gazzayev, who took over as the Russian coach following the World Cup, was quoted as saying by the news agency ITAR-Tass. “Psychologically, Dmitry is not fit for challenging tasks.”
Gazzayev has intimated that Sychyov’s woes were because of the player’s quarrels with his club team, Spartak.
