Indian women's football team coach Thomas Dennerby on Wednesday squarely blamed the AFC for the COVID-19 outbreak that led to the country's ouster from the ongoing Asian Cup in Mumbai, alleging that his players were infected by the hotel staff in a bio-bubble that was not "foolproof". (More Football News)
In a scathing attack on the continental body, Dennerby said India's dream of taking a shot at the FIFA World Cup was shattered not becau෴se of any fault of the players but due to the weak bi꧒o-bubble created by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
He said the AFC did not show any "respect, compassion, empathy" to the team to deal with the "extraordinar💖y" situation in such a high-s❀take tournament.
"We were all negative of COVID when we re🔜ached team hotel and after arrival tests. The first positive case came on the day we went out of hotel for training and a day later (January 17), seven hotel st🌃aff tested positive. It is not rocket science to know how the outbreak came," he told PTI after a virtual media interaction.
"The tests of hotel staff were done on January 17 and results of seven positive cases known on Jan 18. But the information was give🎉n only on Jan 19 afternoon. What was AFC doing for whole one day, we don't know.
"The hotel staff was tested for every six days and not every three days as done in case of teams, we don't know why," an ang💜ry Dennerby alleged.
India were forced out of the AFC Women's Asian Cup on Sunday after a dozen COVID-19 cases among their plaಌyers led to the cancellation of a group match against Chinese Taipei minutes before kickoff here.
The AFC had said given the situation, Article 4.1 o🅘f the tournament rules came into effect, which made it clear that if a team failed to assemble for a match, it would be "considered to have withdrawn f⭕rom the relevant Competition."
Denne🍰rby said the AFC should have asked the infected hotel staꦜff to leave immediately and not have any contact with players.
"We don't know why the AFC did not take immediate action. AFC should have called the hotel directly and asked the infected staff to immediately leave and not to have any contact wiꦓth players," said the Swede.
"Several hotel staff infected with COVID, including team India coordinator, kitchen staff, chef, housekeeping, service staff, all of them taking care of us, cooking and serving food, cleaning our rooms, wh🌄ile we were inside isolated in our rooms, still the AFC waited for a whole day."
He said since the COVID-19 breac﷽h happened at the bio-bub♓ble maintained by the AFC, it should have found a solution.
"Honestly, we are not happy with AFC tourna💮ment organisation and lack of solution oriented dialogue. In one way that destroyed our dream. We ar⛎e not blaming the whole of AFC organisation, AFC is a good organisation in total.
"But sinc꧟e the COVID breach was not our fault, the AFC should have found out a solution. It was an exceptional situation and AFC could have taken steps like say postponing the matches by a few days.
"What real♉ly hurts us is that AFC is now trying to blame us and I think, that is a shame. The only answers we got when we tried to have a dialogue was that they were following article 4.1 of special rules."
The team started training on January 16 when ꧋there was another round of testing and one player returned COVID-19 positive.
Th𝓰ere was another round of testing on January 18 and one more player and two support staff -- team physio and strength and conditioning coach -- were found infected with the virus.
Another round of tests were done on January 21 and it was known the next morni🥀ng that the number of C🐲OVID-19 positive players had increased to 10.
Two players were injured -- their ꦗbone fractured -- and were on plastic cast. There were still 11 COVID-negative players left in the squad.
Then there was further tests and at 5:30pm before ༒Chinese Taipei match (Januarꦬy 23), two more players tested positive, taking the total to 12.
By that time, only nine players were COVID-negative, leading to the cancellation of the ma🍬tch.
Dennerby questioned why the AFC did not cancel the match on the morn⛦ing it🎶self when India did not have enough players (13 under rules) by then.
"If AFC already decided to send us out from this tournament, why do it this painful way, no respect, no c꧙ompassion, no empathy (to) our feelings.
"Honestly, did AFC wanted (us) to look like fools brinﷺging in two players in wheelchairs, is that showing the t🌟eam respect?"
