Wim era ends as Palestine defeats India
Palestine, the 2014 AFC Challenge Cup Champions beat India 3-2 in a friendly match that was played at the Kanchenjunga stadium in Siliguri, on Monday evening. India were leading the match 2-1 at the half time.
India conceded as early as the 8th minute in the match. However Sunil Chhetri and Francis Fernandes scored apiece in the first half as India finished on top. The second half saw Palestine strongly coming back into the match and scoring two goals. Eventually India had to settle with a defeat in the friendly.
As yet another international friendly went by without telecast, fans were very vocal on social media about their displeasure.
Its sad that no sports channel in India is telecasting the international friendly against Palestine! #IndianFootball
— Ajith Vijayan (@AjithMe) October 6, 2014
Notable was also the complete silence from the ISL media team and the social media channels of ISL teams. Completely oblivious about the match, social media channels of ISL teams went about sharing totally irrelevant content. While this is not a big surprise for us, ISL which claims to take Indian football to another level omitting the national team’s friendly certainly does not bode well for the sport in India. All India Football Federation’s social media channels that used to be very active recently was also missing in action today.
Complete news blackout on #Palestine friendly. Looks like @AiffMedia is sleeping – #Indianfootball — football news india (@fni) October 6, 2014
@ChiranjitOjha _/\_ 🙁 As usual, #AIFF hav no interest in promoting/helping #Indianfootball..! 🙁 #IndVsPal
— Nijin Koshy (@Nijin_Koshy) October 6, 2014
There’s a India-Palestine friendly going on, but not a single #HeroISL team nor the official page have promoted it #IndianFootball 1/2
— OutsideoftheBoot.com (@OOTB_football) October 6, 2014
This friendly against Palestine also marked the end of the Dutch coach Wim Koeverman’s stint as the national team’s manager. In the post match presentation ceremony Wim Koevermans confirmed that he is going to step down.
“This was my last match as the coach of the national team and I will not be taking up the post of AIFF’s Technical Director for private reasons,” said the Dutch coach.