Stephen Constantine clarifies 'hyped' India U-17 World Cup team comment

It was a press conference that was supposed to talk about India's preparations for the upcoming SAFF tournament and the Asian Cup. The discussion, however, turned to India's U-17 World Cup performance last year and their achievements.

For Indian football team coach, Stephen Constantine, the hype was more on display than any worthwhile performances. The London-born coach pointed out that the team qualified for the World Cup only because it was the host.

The Indian team lost all the three matches it had played. The coach then cited the media reaction as a reason the nation got carried away with the team. The fact that the U-17 team was subsequently turned by the All India Football Federation into the Indian Arrows team that played in the I-League and came last had also left him feeling indifferent.

All these comments came after Constantine was asked about the club options that the U-17 goalkeeper Dheeraj Singh Moirangthem faces. He highlighted the team lacking a winning performance in its first FIFA tournament and that had left the AIFF honchos red-faced.

One cannot help but feel bad for Moirangthem as he was certainly treated harshly in this context. There was not much that the keeper could have done to prevent the losses. In fact, he was the one who emerged with the most credibility among the players after the World Cup. Hence the garnering of multiple club options, from Motherwell FC and Kerala Blasters, could have been an occasion for the first team coach to utter words of encouragement to the boy.

Earlier in the press conference, Constantine had addressed the issue of Bengaluru FC's Udanta Singh and Nishu Kumar missing out on the SAFF preparation camp due to their club's AFC Cup commitments.

However, Constantine chose to hit out at the junior team's unimpressive performances. Perhaps the Englishman wanted to highlight the need for better performances of the national team from the bottom to the top level. He could have been more diplomatic about the issue, an important one in any national football team, possibly.

Constantine clarifies

The subsequent clarification came later in the evening from Constantine through his social media account. He talked about the need and responsibility to ensure that the U-17 team gains from its exposure at such tournaments. The tweets belied what he had said earlier and where he had been focusing on the performance.

It is clear that he was directly or indirectly made to change his tune for some kind of damage control measure. Possible retaliation from the AIFF which had reveled in the U-17 World Cup and the Indian team could have easily played a part.

What gets reiterated in this entire episode is the clumsiness of the coach and the administrators in making a statement and then being supposedly protective about it to the point of claiming media's misrepresentation.