Under-pressure India football coach Igor Stimac was non-committal about his future with the team after it crashed out of the 2026 World Cup qualification race following a controversial 1-2 loss to Asian champions Qatar in Doha. (More Football News)
Qatar scored from a ball that had cle✱arly gone out of play to equalise before adding a second to send India out of contention from the third round of World Cup qualification.
A few weeks ago, Stimac had promis✤ed to leave if he failed in his "mission" to take India into th♔e third round.
On Tuesday, a crestfallen Stimac was not so sure and said he would need a🍎 few more days to figure things ou꧋t.
"That's something we need to discuss internally in the next few weeks where ou🔴r futures stand. There is nothing I can tell you now," 🍸the 56-year-old, who took over in 2019, said.
"What I🧸 can tell you is that it was obvious tonight that India has a good future in football. Many people will say that Qatar played with a reserve team, but our team is not that older than the Qatari team today," he added.
Last October, Stimac and his support staff got an extension that keeps them in charge of the senior and the under-23 men's football teams till June 2026.
If the team had made the third round of 🎉World Cup Qualifiers, Stimac's contract w𓆏ould have been automatically renewed till 2028.
Despite the heartbreak here, what can't be ignored is India's unde🍌rwhelming campaign, which included a h꧟ome loss to lower-ranked Afghanistan.
Stimac was quizzed about it and he said the team can easily make it to the World Cup if Indian-origin players competing🦄 in European leag🧸ues are allowed into the national fold.
"If we were allowed to use them, then India would qualify for the World Cup regularly. We have 1.5 billion people, but we have a league with🍌 only 13 clubs with no relegation so competitiveness is missi♛ng there.
In half 🦹the season, you have five or six club🎃s who don't fight for anything anymore," he said.
"For the players to come to a certain level of competitiveness, th💯ey need to play under pressure during the season and need to feel the intensity of games❀ in each game without relaxation so that they can come to the international level and provide the same," Stimac explained.
