Out-going Brasa finds a friend in Mahadik
Kabir Mandrekar
The Asian Games are over and India coach Jose Brasa is back in Spain. His contract expired on Tuesday and it could mark the end of the Spaniard’s association with Indian hockey. Allegations and counter-allegations that marked India’s failure to land a gold, the most serious ones coming from Rajpal Singh, who resigned and blamed Brasa for ill-treating him, doesn’t seem like coming to a stop.
On the eve of his departure Brasa had clarified that he had never ill-treated Rajpal, but admitted that he never wanted him as skipper. Now, Brasa has found support in the form of defender and penalty-corner specialist Dhananjay Mahadik, who has blamed Rajpal for India missing out on the final at the Guangzhou Asian Games.
“Rajpal didn’t look like he wanted to win. He ruined our chances of beating Malaysia with some unnecessary fouls, which led to us conceding penalty corners,” Mahadik told The Indian Express on Monday. “In extra-time we were down to 10 men and this was mainly because of the fouls that Rajpal had conceded. That is why we lost,” Mahadik said. The defender also jumped to the defence of Brasa. He said that the Spaniard was the last person to put pressure on any of the players. “I can speak for a majority in the team when I say that we never felt the coach criticised us. We never felt the coach targetted Rajpal either. Rajpal claims he was singled out and not given enough authority as captain but always had a say in team meetings. At the same time, captaincy isn’t very important in hockey; all we needed was a motivator and we definitely didn’t get any motivation from Rajpal”, he said.
At the beginning of the year, just before the World Cup, Brasa had made it clear that Rajpal was not his choice for captain. Brasa, in agreement with the players, wanted Prabhjot Singh as the skipper but Hockey India decided to retain Rajpal.
“Even then, Brasa never criticised or ridiculed Rajpal. Brasa would give us instructions after every match about our diet and exercise. He was a master tactician and he spoke a lot of sense most of the time. Rajpal perhaps mistook that as a criticism,” said Mahadik.
Ahead of CWG, selectors’ were unhappy with Brasa. It has come to light that in August two selectors and two government observers had shot off a letter to Pravir Krishn, special officer Commonwealth Games, to highlight why Jose Brasa had failed as coach of the Indian men’s hockey team.
The letter titled, “Assessment of performance of Mr Jose Brasa foreign coach of Indian men’s hockey team since his appointment in May 2009,” has been signed by selectors Balbir Singh and BP Govinda and the government observers Ajitpal Singh and Zafar Iqbal has highlighted that Brasa has created bad blood within the team — one of the main reasons for the team failing to excel at the World Cup.
The letter is dated August 28, the day the final list of the players for Commonwealth Games was decided. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports is to meet shortly to decided on whether to give Brasa a fresh contract and the timing of the leak of this letter to certain news organisations seem to be a ploy to try and build a case against the Spaniard.
Government observer Ajitpal Singh, when contacted, said that though Brasa’s performance has been evaluated at meetings he had nothing to comment on this letter. Hockey India Secretary General Narendra Batra has also denied any knowledge of the letter. Batra had, however, made it clear earlier that Brasa was an “average coach.”
Among other things, the letter states that players believed that Brasa had very little “technical knowledge” to offer.