‘Igor Stimac Out!’ Fans Lose Faith In Croatian After India's Catastrophic Loss Against Afghanistan In Guwahati

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Indian football fans in Guwahati were unforgiving on Tuesday (March 26) when India went down 1-2 in a catastrophic loss to lower-ranked Afghanistan during the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers second round.

A section of them, dominated by the Blue Pilgrims (the largest and most ardent fan group of the Indian football team), pointed their guns at head coach Igor Stimac and the All India Football Federation. Chants of "Stimac Out" and "AIFF Chor Hai" were hurled point-blank at them after the match at the venue while Stimac boarded the team bus with his head down.

The anger was brewing inside the fans since the AFC Asian Cup debacle last January and reached its boiling point when the national team put out two inefficient displays against a second-string Afghanistan over two legs (they drew 0-0 in Saudi Arabia last week).

While the national team's ambition to reach the third round of the World Cup Qualifiers are now in serious doubt, coach Igor Stimac refused to give his opinion on the matter but did add briefly that someone instructed the fans to raise negative slogans against the 56-year-old Croatian.

MyKhel spoke to several of the fans, including the Blue Pilgrims members present at the venue and understood that it was largely the 30-odd members of the fan group, who vented their frustration out at the coach and AIFF for different reasons.

Going six matches without a win and just a goal hasn't sat down well with the fans at all and have directly faulted Stimac for it, AIFF is seen in a bad light after accusations of corruption, inappropriate use of funds and mismanagement were made against current president Kalyan Chaubey and management.

"There are no results despite promises made while we are asked to be patient by the coach," said a senior Blue Pilgrims member. "We were patient for the last four years but these results were unacceptable and we had to make our feelings apparent."

Another member mentioned that the reports of using an astrologer (pointing at the report by Indian Express in September last year) to decide the national team left many of them disappointed and lose their faith in Stimac. The string of poor results only made it worse.

"Many of us backed Stimac even when results were not coming but he lost a lot of fans after that astrology news broke," said a fan in his early 20s. "And since then we have only have poor results to show, convinced us that Stimac is not the right man for the post."

As for AIFF, fans are finding it hard to trust Kalyan Chaubey and management despite the top brass rejecting all the accusations made so far.

However, not every fans raising chant at night was part of the Blue Pilgrims. While some of them may have expressed their anger as fans, some of them just joined the bandwagon for fun and followed the crowd.

"I don't know much about Indian football but it looked like fun to come to the stadium and hurl abuse at the coach after the loss," said Rabindra Barman, who hails from Cooch Behar and decided to watch the match with his friends during a short business trip to Guwahati.

While the Indian football drama went to another level in Guwahati and could be beginning of some turbulent days to come, coach Igor Stimac maintained at the post-match press conference that he is not going anywhere until June.