ANFA owns responsibility for disgraceful defeat


SOURCE: REPUBLICA
KATHMANDU, July 26: The All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) on Tuesday took responsibility for the humiliating defeat of Nepal against Jordan in the first leg of the second round of FIFA World Cup 2014 qualifiers.

Interestingly, ANFA denied that it was solely responsible for the 9-0 defeat at the hands of Jordan in the first leg match held on Saturday. 
"Though ANFA takes responsibility for the defeat, players and coaches are to be held equally responsible," said Lalit Krishna Shrestha, the vice-president and spokesperson of ANFA, at a press conference in the capital on Tuesday. The press meet was held to inform about the preparations for the second leg of the qualifiers to be played at the Dasharath Stadium on Thursday.

"We will try to analyze the weaknesses of every component including that of the management, coach and players. However, physical infrastructure and facilities to players should also be taken into account for the below-par performance," Shrestha said.

ANFA which allotted only three days for training following completion of the hectic A division league finally accepted that the training period for the match was insufficient. British coach Graham Roberts had repeatedly requested ANFA to allot at least three weeks for the training. But ANFA had turned a deaf ear to the coach´s request. 

"We had proposed the clubs to stop the league for the time being to prepare for the World Cup. But they requested us to finish the league as soon as possible as many of them have hired foreign players. They were under pressure to get working visas for the foreign players," Shrestha said.

However, CEO Indraman Tuladhar begged to differ. "We did not stop the league for World Cup preparations hoping that the players would maintain their pace if they played matches continuously."

Regarding coach Roberts´ future in Nepal, Shrestha said, "It was not the right moment to discuss about the coach. It will be discussed after the second leg."

Preparations complete for Nepal-Jordan match

ANFA at the same function said that it has completed all the preparations for the second leg of the event to be held on Thursday. According to ANFA General Secretary Dhirendra Pradhan, the event will be held at 15:30 NST. The tickets are priced at Rs 200 for ordinary and Rs 500 for VIP parapet. 

The tickets will be available on Thursday morning at KMC, VS Niketan School, Tripureshwar and Thapathali Traffic Office. The match will be telecast live by Kantipur TV.

ANFA has prohibited spectators from taking harmful objects into the stadium for security reasons. The expected cost of the event is Rs 2.2 million.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i dont understand your news!!

NepaliFootball.com said...

Thank you for your concern,
in summary:
Nepal National team didn't got sufficient training time owing to the ongoing League. The manager Graham Roberts requested atleast 4 weeks of training prior to the Jordan encounter as well as training in Bahrain. His plan was to make Nepalese National team to become acclimatise to the high temperatures in Jordan. But unfortunately our team had only 3 days to train.