On Wednesday, the coach of the Indian women’s football team, Thomas Dennerby blames the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) for the country’s exile from the current Asian Cup. He alleges that the bio-bubble set up by the continental body was not infallible due to which it affected the players with COVID-19 positive cases.
Thomas said that they were all negative against COVID-19 when they reached the hotel and after the arrival tests. The first positive case came on the day when they went out of the hotel for their training and the day later, seven hotel staff tested COVID-19 positive. He said that it’s not rocket science to know how the outbreak happened.
“Moreover, seven hotel staff tested positive on January 17 tests and they informed us about it one day later. What was AFC doing for one whole day, we don’t know. The hotel staff was not tested every three days just like the teams. The staff was being tested every six days, we don’t know the reasons,” said the Indian coach angrily to PTI.
He also said since the COVID-9 outbreak happened at the bio-bubble conserved by the AFC, it should have come up with a solution.
Thomas believes that they are not happy with AFC and their lack of solution-oriented dialogue. In one way, it destroyed their dream, but they don’t blame the role of AFC completely. They see it as a good organization in total.
They firmly believe that the COVID-19 breach wasn’t their fault, the AFC must have come up with a solution. It was an exceptional situation, and AFC could have taken measures like deferring the matches by a few days.