Recounting the defeat to Oman that almost ended Constantine’s time as India’s coach

This is an excerpt From Delhi to the Den, the story of Stephen Constantine, published by De Coubertin books.

Guam is a tiny US territory in the middle of the Pacific, halfway between Japan and Australia. In other words, it’s a long-ass flight from India. We set off the morning after losing to Oman: Bangalore to Tokyo, then south to Guam.

We were as professional as possible. We arrived at 4 p.m., did a light session on the beach – you’re always near a beach in Guam – then held a team meeting at 9 p.m., before eating. We didn’t want them sleeping too early. If they did, they would be up half the night and out of sync for days.

On paper, Guam versus India is a mismatch; a speck versus a subcontinent. The island is 210 square miles and the population is less than 200,000. In 2005 they lost 15–0 to Hong Kong and 21–0 to North Korea. But their side had changed.

Under their English manager Gary White they were picking American-based players with Guam heritage. While we lost to Oman, they beat Turkmenistan 1–0 at home. Against us, six of their starting eleven played in the US. Their centre-half, A.J. DeLaGarza, was a three-time MLS winner with LA Galaxy. Only one player, the skipper Jason Cunliffe, was based in Guam. We couldn’t take them lightly. In fact, given India’s recent record, we couldn’t take anyone lightly.

The game was played on plastic at Guam’s national football centre. It was an unlikely venue for a World Cup qualifier. At one end was a training pitch; at the other, a car park. Palm trees and gazebos lined the field. Most of the 3,000 fans were packed into one stand, while a cameraman stood on the roof. In between the long plastic dugouts was a blue Portaloo. It was for the fans, not the coaches.

A tropical island on a sunny June afternoon is not the ideal place for football. The artificial turf shimmered in the heat. For some reason, Gary came out in a cardigan and cravat. I was hot just looking at him.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked, with a nod to his outfit.

‘There’s a price to pay for quality,’ he responded, smiling.

For once, I ditched the suit and wore an AIFF polo shirt. Shortly after kickoff I was told to wear a bib – my shirt was clashing with Guam’s kit – and I was soon bothered, as well as hot. We passed the ball nicely but we were coasting. There was no intensity. No snap. I turned to Danny Deigan, our sports scientist, and asked what our warm-up was like. He pulled a face. Not great.

A doomed game in Guam

I hate that. If the players don’t prepare properly, you have problems. Sure enough, Guam took the lead after 37 minutes. It was a header from a long throw, which infuriated me. We knew they had two long-throw specialists, so we had practised defending them in training. It didn’t do any good. I made two substitutions at half-time but, given the chance, I would have made seven or eight.

After an hour, they went 2–0 up. Sunil scored a superb header in the 93rd minute but it meant nothing. For the second match in a row, we lost 2–1.

Losing to a team of Americans restarted the debate on picking foreign players. In theory, I would love to select two or three Indian-origin players from Europe or North America. They would improve the squad and set the bar higher for domestic players. It’s not a long-term solution. If you pick too many, you harm Indian-born players, and the team loses its integrity. But it’s a catalyst. A boost. Almost every other team does it, but in India, it’s impossible.

The rules are simple: the Indian constitution does not allow dual citizenship. You either have an Indian passport or a foreign passport. You can’t have both. If – for example – a British-Indian wanted to play for India, he would have to give up his UK passport, then meet the criteria for Indian citizenship, which can take years. Understandably, most people don’t fancy it, even for an international cap. There are forms of dual-citizenship known as Overseas Citizen cards, or Person of Indian Origin cards, but the government has said holders are not eligible for sports teams.

If it were up to me, I would award temporary passports, which allow people to play for the national team. When the game is finished, they hand them over. If they’re selected again, they get them back. It can be done: I had a Rwandan passport when I travelled with their national team.

In my first spell with India I phoned Michael Chopra, then a young striker at Newcastle United. Michael is English but has an Indian father, so I asked if he was interested in playing for us. It would have meant losing his UK passport, but it would have made him a superstar. If Baichung was big, Michael could have been bigger. He could have broken every Indian record, but his heart was set on England. I didn’t blame him – he played for their youth teams – but he never won a full cap.

AIFF not keen on Indian-origin players

Thirteen years later, there were more Indian-origin players to choose from. Danny Batth, a centre-half for Wolves, and Ricardo Kishna, a winger at Ajax, would have helped us beat Guam. But while they were eligible for India under FIFA rules, they were barred by the government.

I spoke to Kushal Das and asked him to lobby the sports ministry. I even spoke to the British High Commission in Delhi, who had a bold idea: why not raise the issue with the Indian Prime Minister on stage at Wembley?

Narendra Modi was due to give a speech in November at England’s national stadium. An official at the High Commission suggested flying me over, putting me on stage, and asking about Indian-origin players in public. ‘It will be great for Anglo-Indian relations,’ he said. But the AIFF was less keen.

‘Thanks for your efforts,’ said the president, Praful Patel. ‘But it’s not going to happen.’

The Guam game highlighted another problem: the looming shadow of the Indian Super League. The auction, where ten of the best Indian players went to the highest bidder, took place on 10 July, a month after the Guam game. But the players’ medicals were two days after we got back.

Our players could earn huge sums in the ISL – Sunil went for almost $200,000, while Eugeneson got $150,000 – but not if they were injured. In my opinion, the medical had a huge effect on our performance. I’m not pointing fingers – Sunil and Eugeneson have been fantastic for me – but, overall, we were flat. It wasn’t the last time the ISL would affect my team.

We played Nepal in a friendly in August, a young side drawing 0–0 in Pune, before losing 3–0 to Iran in Bangalore in our third qualifier. We were only 1–0 down at half-time. I told the players to believe, but six minutes later, two silly mistakes had put us 3–0 down.

It was a decent performance – ‘We didn’t expect them to play with so much determination,’ said the Iran manager Carlos Queiroz – but it was another loss. In October, we had back-to-back away qualifiers: Turkmenistan on the 8th and Oman on the 13th. But the circus was rolling into town. The ISL started on 3 October.

At the ISL auction in July, I met a number of teams’ managers, including David Platt, Roberto Carlos, Zico and Marco Materazzi. They were all supportive. I said I wanted the players from 26 September for the Oman and Turkmenistan games. No one objected, so I planned a ten-day training camp.

When September arrived, Kushal Das said I would get the players on 5 October, three days before the Turkmenistan game. It was unacceptable. You can’t prepare for a World Cup qualifier with two training sessions, especially as the players were in pre-season. Like I said: if the guys were coming from the Premier League or La Liga, three days might be OK. But they weren’t. They needed to work.

I told Kushal to pull rank, but he couldn’t. The league was too powerful. In Indian football, it seemed, the ISL outranked the national team. We got the players on 5 October, like the ISL wanted, with some players not arriving until the evening. But even that wasn’t enough for some.

I met Roberto Carlos, the former Brazil left-back, at the auction in July. He had just been named coach of the Delhi Dynamos. We chatted in the lobby and got on well. He said he’d heard good things about me, and asked to watch us train. A week before the Turkmenistan game, he called me.

‘Can you do me a favour?’ he asked, speaking via a translator.

‘Like you did for me?’ I replied, pissed off.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘I wanted my camp to start on September 26th,’ I said. ‘You said that was fine. But thanks to you – and some of the other managers – I’m getting them on October 5th.’

‘That’s nothing to do with me. And by the way – I want my players for the Dynamos game on October 4th.’ Although the FIFA dates were 5–13 October, the players had to leave on the 4th, in order to make the camp.

‘Not a chance,’ I told Carlos. ‘It is not happening.’ The phone call ended. Any rapport from the ISL auction was gone. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. I don’t care about buttering up big names. That week, Carlos moaned to the press.

‘I did not like the way he spoke to me at all,’ he said. I had to laugh. He obviously wasn’t used to people saying no.

Power struggle with ISL

I am not anti-ISL. It has done a fantastic job for Indian football by attracting fans – and sponsors – who never looked at the game before. The chairperson Nita Ambani deserves all the credit in the world. She thought big, which I love, and it has worked. Indian football was sleeping and she has woken it up. But you can’t have a league that doesn’t work in sync with the national team.

The FIFA calendar has five dates for international matches: late March, early June, early September, early October and early November. Across the world, leagues take a week or two off for internationals. But in 2015, the ISL scheduled twelve games in the first half of October. It was madness.

In my opinion, both leagues – the I-League and the ISL – should play at the same time. The top four from each division would go into an MLS-style playoff, with the winners the national champions.

To make it fair, the national coach would select the top forty Indian players, who would be divided equally between the clubs. Each team would be allowed three foreigners, with the season lasting seven or eight months. Crucially, the league would respect the FIFA calendar, to give the national team the best chance.

Sadly, this wasn’t the case in 2015. We arrived in Ashgabat 48 hours before kick-off.

The Turkmen capital is a surreal place. The buildings are made from marble but the streets are empty. It has been described as a cross between Las Vegas and Pyongyang. I first went in 2003 for an Olympic qualifier with India under-23s. While sightseeing, I asked a soldier if I could photograph a gold-plated statue of then-president Saparmurat Niyazov. He said ‘da’.

I stepped over a chain-link fence with my camera. Something, however, was lost in translation. As I approached the statue, the soldier thrust his bayonet an inch from my neck. I jumped back, heart racing, and took the photo from distance.

By 2015 Mr Niyazov was no more – he died nine years earlier – but a huge portrait of the new president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, loomed over the halfway line at the Kopetdag stadium. He was riding a bike.

In the eighth minute the president saw Turkmenistan carve open our back four to go 1–0 up. They gave us an equaliser after 28 minutes – their keeper tried to chip the ball over Jeje Lalpekhlua – but they scored another fantastic goal on the hour. From then on, they sat deep, and we ran out of ideas. For the third time in four World Cup matches we lost 2–1.

I was frustrated. If we’d had a ten-day camp – or even five days – we could have won. Turkmenistan weren’t better than us. It sounds like I’m making excuses, but I’ve been doing this a while. I know the difference a week of training makes. As it turned out, our problems were about to get worse.

The game finished at 8 p.m. on Thursday. Our flight was due to leave Ashgabat at 5.30 p.m. on Friday, but bad weather meant the incoming flight didn’t arrive. After hanging round the airport for hours, we tried to return to our hotel, but we had only single-entry visas. We weren’t allowed to leave.

After hours of discussion between us, immigration and the Turkmenistan FA, we were allowed to stay in a hotel near the airport. But, by Saturday morning, the plane still hadn’t arrived, so we spent all day waiting for news. By now, morale was low. There are only so many magazines you can read.

We eventually left at 9.30 p.m. – 29 hours later than expected – and, after changing in Dubai, arrived in Oman at 2 a.m. on Sunday. To top it off, we then waited another hour for the bus to the hotel. The whole journey, from Ashgabat to Muscat, was supposed to take five hours.

People see England’s World Cup squad posing on the steps of a British Airways flight and think international footballers travel in luxury. In fact, they spend half their lives in airports, staring at departure boards that don’t move. Waiting 29 hours for a flight in Ashgabat isn’t glamorous.

The Oman game was on Tuesday, two days after we arrived. I had planned four sessions. Instead we had two. It’s hard to imagine a worse trip. Before kickoff, I knew the boys were dead on their feet. It was five days since the Turkmenistan game and they hadn’t recovered. How could they?

There was no one to blame, but we didn’t stand a chance. We reached half-time at 0–0 but they scored from a set piece after 54 minutes and won 3–0. In all honesty, it could have been six. Gurpreet Singh – starting his third game in a row – was superb. I was down, so the last thing I needed was another fight with the ISL. But that is what I got.

Before Oman, the AIFF said the ISL wanted their players released as soon as the full-time whistle went, so they could fly home immediately. It was a bad idea: the players needed to rest after a long week. The sooner they got home, the sooner they would play, and I wanted them to recover. I told the AIFF we shouldn’t release them. Soon after, I got an email from Pune City manager David Platt.

‘After agreeing we could fly players back independently, there seems to be a change of decision,’ he wrote. ‘It would be very much appreciated if you could release the players.’

‘At no point did I agree to the players travelling separately,’ I wrote back. ‘I am not releasing any players for any team.’ I had no problem with David Platt. His email was polite, and I know he – like me – wanted the best for his team. But I couldn’t let the ISL run the national team. No club is bigger than India.

If we want to become a top-100 team, or qualify for the World Cup, we have to think big. Sadly, the AIFF weren’t able to resist the ISL. I was overruled and the players left Oman in dribs and drabs in the early hours. They didn’t even stay for the post-match meal. The ‘India team’ that arrived in Delhi consisted of seven members of staff and two players. It was embarrassing.

The optimism of Nepal, and the first Oman game, was gone. We had lost five out of five. We were bottom of the group. On the way back from Oman, I read the news on my laptop.

‘AIFF set to sack Indian coach Stephen Constantine,’ said the headline