The ex-England international and Tottehman captain is rumored to have quit after differences with members of the football governing body, the All Nepal Football Association (ANFA). Prajwal Oli and Biswas Baral caught up with Roberts to discuss his tenure as Nepal’s coach, the state of Nepali football and the reports of his differences with ANFA officials. [break]
You have been in Nepal for last 13 months. How has your experience here been?
I have enjoyed my stay, particularly the football part of it. I think I have improved the boys. I think they have gone up a notch during my time here. They have gone from the bottom of the rankings to the top team in South Asia. When I first came the boys were very lazy. They had an attitude problem. I got them to work hard.
Roberts with ANFA president Ganesh Thapa.
When you arrived in Nepal, how did you find the level of professionalism in Nepali football?
There was no professionalism. It was all amateur football. It´s not changed much. To be a professional you have to play around 10 months a year. But you have a national league that ran for 24 days the last time. It’s impossible to improve in this condition. You have to have a structure where each team plays the other twice, maybe even thrice. You have just a couple of good pitches in Nepal. So you will have to improve upon this situation. You should have at least 3-4 stadiums. That will also help space out the games and you will get a better quality of players.
How do you rate the quality of Nepal football in South Asia?
I think you are better than all the teams in South Asia now. India, during the AFC Cup, was not half the team it was in the SAFF championship (in 2011). I believe we would have beaten them here. But again, we lost to the Maldives. You may ask: How can you say that? Well, I think our boys have improved. We created a lot of chances in recent games. Our problem was lack of strikers. But that is not just a problem for Nepal, but for all South Asian countries. The Maldives have effectively one striker, India have just two. They will struggle against powerful teams.
Why do you think there are such few good strikers in the region?
Look, you have got to have natural talent to be a striker. You cannot make a striker. You have either got that instinct or you don’t. I was talking to the Turkmenistan coach the other day and he told me that Nepali strikers pass it back whenever they get the ball. Why? It’s the question of mentality. They receive the ball and they go backwards! If you look at North Korea or the Philippines, their strikers go forward soon as they receive the ball. Our strikers, first touch, they go backwards. You can tell them, you can coach them, but at the end of the day it’s instinctive. We tried to make them go forward in training. One day they did it, but it’s the same old story the next day.
What can we do to improve the situation?
I don’t know. Look at (India’s striker) Sunil Chhetri’s movements. The moment he gets the ball, he wants to go forward towards the goal. But here, the mentality is that I got to control the ball and go backwards. I don’t know how you change this. There could be a Nepali boy in England or somewhere else playing football who might have that instinct. You got to scout for them. That’s what the Philippines have done. They have brought together players in America, in England, in Norway. There are four players playing at the highest level. Two lads (the Younghusband brothers) play for Chelsea. They have come through Chelsea’s academy, played for its reserve team and gone to Norway, Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. They instinctively go forward when they receive the ball. You can’t replicate something that you don’t have in your mind first. You have good players but their instinct is to go back. Anil (Gurung) had a good chance the other day against Turkmenistan and he passed it to Santosh (Sahukhala). It’s a question of confidence, maybe.
In the league you are playing, the bottom six or seven teams are a waste of time. How many times do we play at these games with the pace we do on the international arena? Never. I have watched some of the national league matches and I might well have been watching the paint dry. It was that slow.
Besides the shortage of strikers, what do you think went wrong during the ongoing AFC tournament?
Well, the bottom line is that we didn’t score goals. We created enough chances. Jumanu (Rai) had two good chances in the first game against Palestine. He hit the post. It could easily have gone in. Then, it would be 1-1, a different game. In another instance, our goalkeeper lost his concentration and fumbled with the ball before it ended up in the back of the net. The Palestine players got a chance, they put it in. Our players, given similar chances, hit it wide.
The boys disappointed the whole country. They could have played better. But in life you only get what you put into it.
There seem to have been some problems on the pitch. What were the problems off it that hampered Nepal’s chances?
Yes, there were some problems. But that happens everywhere, even in England.
But did you get the needed support, both in terms of equipment and manpower, from ANFA?
I did. I certainly wanted more players. But I was told three-four weeks before that I had 20 players available. If there were more, I would have had a bigger squad to choose from. I kept fighting, fighting, fighting for 23 players, but I had to make do with 20. You can only fight so much. At the end of the day, they make the decisions and you do your best with the available resources. Even of the 20 players, only 15-16 have what it takes to play at the top level.
I tried to make a substitution during the second game (against the Maldives), but somebody told me—I am not going to take names—“no, no, no, this is his first game, he cannot play”. But if you don’t play, how can you get experience?
Were these events the reason you quit the job of the national coach?
Let me make this clear, I didn’t quit. Before the Turkmenistan game, I said in the press conference that today is my last game. Everything was settled amicably. I never resigned. It was settled before the Turkmenistan game.
In Nepal, politics has seeped into all sectors. Did you also feel it interfered with your job as Nepal’s coach?
At certain times. But I am strong-willed. I stick to my guns. I don’t think the Nepali boys stick to their guns. Yes, politics is a problem, but that’s true of every aspect of our life. But comparatively, yes. In England for instance the chairman will have a meeting with the manager, but the chairman doesn’t pick the team. The coach is the man to deal with everything on-pitch.
There was a photo of you supposedly arguing with the team manager Krishna Bhakta Manandhar during the second match against the Maldives…
I wasn’t arguing with him. I told him to change one player. He came back and asked, “Do you want to wait a minute?” I said I wanted it done right then. It was nothing about me telling him off or anything. Nothing to do with the assistant coach.
There were also rumors that ANFA president Ganesh Thapa had directly intervened during the Maldives game. Apparently, it was under his orders that Santosh Sahukhala was brought in as the substitute, which was against your wishes.
There is a problem with Nepali boys. They take phones with them to the dressing room. I said no phones. When we leave the hotel, the phones go off until we come back after the match. On Monday (before the Tajikistan clash), I shouted at the players who were busy ringing their wives and girlfriends.
About whether the ANFA president interfered with my job, no, he never did. I am strong-willed. Nobody will ever tells me whom to pick.
None of the South Asian teams (Nepal, India and the Maldives) could make it to the AFC semi-finals. Do you believe the quality of South Asian football is inferior to say, the quality of football in Central or South East Asia?
I think so. I was talking to the Tajikistan coach the other day and he said his players were playing the second Bundesliga, the second division football in Germany, which is better than anything in this part of the world.
Yes, you have foreign players come to Nepal, but you tell me, how many of these players have played internationally? You had, I guess, three Africans playing in the national league, but not one of them had played at the international stage. They were pathetic. Why give them the contract? You aren’t going to improve standards unless you bring in players who are better than the local players. I can have the top team here (Nepal Police) play against a team of amateur players from England and the Nepali side will still be beaten, easily.
Will sending our players to play or train abroad improve things?
It could. Look at India which is now playing teams from the English Premier League. I watched that game and some players of the Indian squad were really good. You might go to places like Norway and Malta which have all professional leagues. The standard there is very-very good. You can’t ask me to take players to England because they won’t get work visas. We tried to get Rohit (Chand) to go to the Rangers (in Scotland), but that didn’t work out. You can at least take players to the countries like Romania and Malta where you are more likely to get visas. Another thing you could do is restructure your league to span six to eight months. That will help improve quality as well. If the players are playing continuously for a month, as happens here, they get burned out and are liable to picking up injuries.
The ANFA president has hinted that we might not have seen the last of you. Will you continue to be involved with Nepali football in some way?
We will see. I am going home right now. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. But there is a possibility (that I might come back). I am not someone who shut’s the door on somebody. The president was saying the other day that Nepal was trying to host the 2013 SAFF championship. I said I will come back and watch if I am not involved with another team.
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