Igor Stimac Picture Credit: Twitter
Indian national football team head coach Igor Stimac has been given a new one-year extension till September 2022 by the All India Football Federation technical committee. Stimac took over as India’s head coach on May 15, 2019. He was recently given a three-month extension, after rumours that his tenure with the Blue Tigers was coming to an end after a string of poor results recently. The Croatian was in charge of India’s 2022 World Cup and 2023 AFC Asian Cup qualifiers, where they were drawn in Group E and finished third in the group with seven points. This means that India qualified for the third round of the AFC Asian Cup in 2023. Stimac declared at an AIFF press conference that qualifying for the third round of the Asian Cup qualifiers was a goal achieved.
Stimac given extension via video conference
Stimac was given the extension via a video conference. Chairman Shyam Thapa, interim Technical Director Savio Medeira and General Secretary Kushal Das were also present in the meeting. "National head coach Mr. Igor Stimac made a presentation on the performance graph of the Senior Men’s National Team wherein he highlighted about the change in football philosophy, and emergence of future generation of the Blue Tigers in the National Team set-up. Stimac has been on contract as Head Coach since May 2019," the AIFF said in a statement.
In the meeting, leave of absence was granted to Pradip Kumar Datta and Sundar Raman while all other members attended the meeting.
"The committee deliberated at length, and reached a consensus that in view of the external factors which has had a huge impact on the footballing world in general, and with the National Team all set to begin their campaign in their quest to qualify for the AFC Asian Cup China 2023, Head Coach Igor Stimac be given an extension of his contract till September 2022," the statement further read.
The AFC Asian Cup qualifiers will be played from February 2022 to September 2022.
