After Bob Houghton resigned as India's national football coach there has been a hunt for a new coach over the last few weeks. There are reports and rumors floating around about the kind of applications that AIFF has received. Many Indian football crazies got super excited to see rumors/reports that Andi Voller, a coach who led Germany to a World cup final, was interested in the job. Officials rejected those reports and killed the dreams that some of us were painting in our minds. Surprisingly, for AIFF and the fans, there are some high profile former national coaches who are actually interested in coaching India.
Apparently, former coach of Argentina Jose Pakerman and former coach of Japan Philippe Traussier are a couple of those high profile coaches who are interested. The first instinct would be to go ahead and hire these experienced coaches, but once you find out how much they cost your instincts will wither away. Can we afford a million dollars?
Houghton got paid $360,000 dollars per annum and according to AIFF the new coach will not get paid any more than the amount Houghton bagged. $360,000 sounds like a lot of money, and it most definitely is for India's standards and it is a decent level pay according to the world football standards.
To get a perspective here is a list of some countries' national coach salaries during the 2010 World cup:
1. Fabio Capello, England: $12,601,600
2. Marcelo Lippi, Italy : $4,296,000
3. Joachim Loew, Germany : $3,580,000
4. Berter Van Marwijk, Netherlands : $2,577,600
5. Ottmar Hitzfeld, Switzerland: $2,506,000
6. Vicente Del Bosque, Spain : $2,148,000
7. Carlos Queiroz, Portugal : $1,933,200
8. Pim Verbeek, Australia : $1,718,400
9. Carlos Parreira, South Africa: $1,718,400
10. Javier Aguirre, Mexico : $1,718,400
11. Carlos Dunga, Brazil : $1,145,600
12. Diego Maradona, Argentina : $1,145,600
13. Takeshi Okada, Japan : $1,145,600
14. Ricki Herbert, New Zealand : $1,145,600
15. Otto Rehhagel, Greece : $1,074,000
16. Paul Le Guen, Cameroon : $930,800
17. Marcelo Bielsa, Chile : $823,400
18. Raymond Domenech, France : $801,920
19. Vahdi Halilhodzic, Ivory Coast : $723,160
20. Huh Jung Moo, South Korea: $579,960
21. Morten Olsen, Denmark : $558,480
22. Milovan Rajevac, Ghana : $522,680
23. Radomir Antic, Serbia : $436,760
24. Bob Bradley, USA : $393,800
25. Matjaz Kek, Slovenia : $350,840 <-------------Houghton's pay grade
26. Gerardo Martino, Paraguay : $350,840
27. Rabah Saadane, Algeria : $350,840
28. Reinaldo Rueda, Honduras : $343,680
29. Vladimir Weiss, Slovakia : $307,880
30. Oscar Tabarez, Uruguay : $293560
31. Kim Jong Hun, North Korea: $243,440
32. Shaibu Amodu, Nigeria : $179,000
Based on these numbers India pays just about as much as Slovenia, Paraguay, and Algeria. According to FIFA, these three teams rank 17th, 23rd, and 40th respectively while India ranks 146th. Is it that the coaches from Slovenia, Paraguay and Algeria over achieved? Or is it because India's coach under achieved? The answer might not be that simple.
Here are some football facts of U.S, India, and Nigeria:
U.S's soccer(football) budget = $60 million, spends $393,800 on their coach, ranks 22nd in the world.
India's football budget = $10 million, spends $360,000 on their coach, ranks 146th in the world.
Nigeria's football budget = $43 million, spends $179,000 on their coach, ranks 38th in the world.
Based on these numbers the quality of the coach isn't the major factor which effects the ranking of a country, what matters is how much the country spends on the overall development of the sport. The difference between what the U.S, India, and Nigeria does is at the grassroots level. The word "grassroots" refers to the kind of local coaches they groom, the kind of football fields they have, the kind of stadiums they build and the kind of leagues they run from the ages 8 through 18.
Conclusion:
Even if we hire a million dollar coach, if the AIFF doesn't develop the game at the grassroots stage the players we produce will not be good enough to comprehend what a million dollar coach asks them to do. Instead of hiring a high profile coach, we need to hire five mediocre coaches (worth $200k per annum) and assign them to train at the grassroots level. AIFF says "no" to those high profile coaches, and I agree with them on this one.
