 We have with us the coach of the senior men's national team, Mr. Stephen Constantine. Thanks, sir, for taking the time to join us this afternoon. It's a pleasure. The idea of having this conversation was to, without editorialising, just have a free flowing sort of conversation about where the national team is at and how you're preparing for what's likely to be the biggest tournament for the national team. So, just to get straight into it, how are things developing and how have you seen the team grow over the past four years? Wow, I think it's been an amazing journey so far. Obviously, the cherry on the cake will be the Asian Cup, but it's been very difficult. Obviously, it took us almost three years to qualify for the Asian Cup and I think this is the first time we've ever done it this way. I am extremely proud of the players and the work that everybody at the Federation has done. I mean, it's a completely team effort. The goal scorer usually gets the glory and the coach usually gets the glory, but you've got to look at the girl who does the logistics, books the flights and all of that and the groundsmen and the guys who do the kit. There's so many people involved. It's just a massive operation and I'm very proud to be the head coach. Something that you talked about at length in your book as well. League structures in India, how the club system sort of feeds into the national team and therefore the results of the national team. Compared to your first stint as a national team coach, how have you seen the club structure in India develop in terms of robustness, in terms of coaching standards? Okay, I think obviously the level of coaching is higher because you have more foreign coaches here and some of them are very good level, have coached at the top level. So I think that's there, but we need to be doing a lot more further down. You see the head coach of a Delhi Dynamo or the head coach of the national team. For me, he's not the most important person. The most important person is the grassroots coach and the youth development coach because they're the ones who are building the foundation for the future. The difference between 2002, 2005, 2015 and 2019 is the ISL has put Indian football on the map. Everybody in the world knows that we have an Indian Super League and that's fine, but you've got to go a little bit further underneath the top layer and see what's happening underneath. We will be in the same situation in five years time if we are not developing our coaches and our younger players. That is the thing that has not happened in the ten years. We have not developed good quality Indian coaches. We have some, but not enough and therefore if you don't have the quality Indian coaches how are you going to get the quality Indian players? So when you look at some of the players now in many cases they don't know the foundation of the game because nobody's shown them and where's my proof of that? We don't have a single player playing outside of the Indian leagues and that's because the level of most of the other leagues should we say European leagues is far higher than the level that we have at the moment and that goes for the same for the China's, the Japan's, the South Korea's the UAE, Saudi's, Uzbekistan. Those leagues are so much ahead because they spent the time building the foundation. The foundation is grassroots. The foundation is good quality Indian coaches, not quantity. We have quantity in everything we do here but we need to focus on the quality and I think that's beginning to happen but like I said I left India in 2005 and I said these things and disappointed coming back and... ...seem similar to each other. Similar. Just sticking with this chain of thought for a minute longer in your opinion we're trying to create this elite level competition at the very top like you mentioned do you think it would be more beneficial to have a more inclusive league structure with more clubs so that one of the things that we're lacking in terms of quantity is competitive fixtures even for elite level footballers in India they're only paying 20-25 sometimes maybe a few more games. Look, we definitely need a bigger league we definitely need more games and we definitely need less foreigners so that the Indian boy has the opportunity recently was asked a question about that so an Indian player is thinking if I want to play football don't go as a striker because I'm not going to get in most clubs you've got two foreigners or one foreigner as a striker so that leaves a spot for an Indian so he'll play midfield or you'll pay it right back and you see now what's happening in the league we've got Indian players playing out of position to accommodate the foreigner when it should be the other way round we should be playing Indian players in the positions that they play and get a foreigner in to supplement or compliment where the Indian pair, not the other way round but when the league started there were seven foreigners I believe now it's six or now it's five and hopefully next year it's four and if it was me I would make it two maybe but that's me so are we suffering in a way from on the one hand there's a push to make the sport more popular broad based television friendly audience which is happening of course in social media and things like that but on the flip side there's this little conundrum yeah look so in a sense what are you talking about earlier as well short term versus long term nothing can happen overnight no but there needs to be somewhere to go so the other version is you have all these academies you're producing players but there's no way for them to play there needs to be a pathway you have the pathway iLeague, ISL, it's there that's our level what we need now is to really go down and develop the coaches so that they will develop the players and we need a proper plan and we need a vision for this to happen is it happening yes is it happening enough for me no for me no not enough and that needs to be decided by the powers that be I mean it's not something I can do on your own no I've tried we've spoken about this before about the need to have sort of a cohesive way, Indian way in which teams play we've got to play our style of play it really does my heading when you have foreign coaches come over here and oh we're going to play the way we play where we are but guess what, you're not where you are you're in India, we have our culture here we have our way of life and how we do things is it perfect no but it's ours and so you have to come in with your ideas and your experience which is why they're bringing the foreigner in and he has to take the best out of what's in the country and make it better and that's what I try to do at a personal level for you this is a major tournament as well and how excited are you to be taking leading the team well obviously being the national coach for me is a huge honour being the coach to lead India in the Asian Cup is again you know it's massive, it's massive for me, I'm very proud and as I said before I have a lot of people to thank to be in this position and my boss Mr Patel and Mr Das have stuck with me because when I first came on some dark days and I told them the way we are right now we're going to have to go through some very dark times trust me and I will get us there and thanks to the efforts of everybody we have managed to do that I'd like to speak about individual players but you're going to make me you're going to try and make me you've given a lot of players a chance to represent the national team a lot of young players particularly like Anirudh Thapa for example he had a phenomenal game against China he's developing into that midfield sort of dynamo rule that is so important in holding a team together absolutely how positive is this as a sign that there are young Indian players who want to have the ball, want to be involved both defensively, in transition, going forward look the ability is here we have talent all over the place if you look at some of the other players in the Indian national team when we found them they didn't even have clubs so it's just a question of us looking and again I go back to them being taught the right things at the right time the younger you can get them the more you can teach them the less set in their ways they are but when you're working with a 24, 25 year old a 28 year old he's been doing that that's got him this far and it's difficult for them to change but look if an Indian player gets the same information as an English player or a Spanish player what is the difference but the difference is that the English boy and the Spanish boy are getting it from the age of 9, 10 and the Indian boy isn't and that's where we have the deficiency it's something that we need to fix are you looking forward to selection headaches Balvan for example cracking one in from long range it's always good when you have choice choice breeds competition competition breeds choice and you want to have 3 or 4 strikers to choose from people need to be looking over their shoulder they need to be under pressure they need to know that look if I don't do this play well maybe I'm going to get dropped you know one of the things I say to the players before they go out you ask me the motivation I will tell you I say to them most often play today like it's the last time you're ever going to play for India because maybe it is so if you think about that this today is the last time you're going to play give everything you have and for 4 years they have and I expect them to do it to continue last question I guess to wind up how important is it for these young players these developing players to go to a major competition to feel that to experience that and to play against competition that is it's once in a lifetime for us in India it's once in a lifetime you cannot buy this the boys that will go they will be telling their grandchildren in 30 years time that I was there and I think it's a big deal it's a big deal the ones who won't be there it's going to be bad luck I can tell you there's going to be some people very unhappy boys who have been part of this setup and they have all contributed one way or another but at the end of the day I can only take 23 so I'm going to have some problems thanks very much