India's beleaguered chief coach Joaquim Carvalho may get another brief tenure with the Indian Hockey Federation on Thursday making it clear that his resignation will not be accepted.
Carvalho had decided to step down in the wake of India's failure to qualify for the Olympics for the first time in 80 years but IHF chief KPS Gill said it would be unfair to put the entire blame on the coach.
"We have not received his resignation. So there is no question of accepting it. He is still the coach," Gill told PTI in an interview.
The IHF supremo said he had called Carvalho for a meeting in New Delhi on March 18 and would discuss the Chile debacle in detail.
"It's not fair to blame just one individual for the defeat. There were many factors and we will discuss and analyse everything," he said.
Asked whether the IHF had accepted the resignation of its Vice-President Narender Batra, who is known to be a bitter critic of Gill's 'autocratic' style of functioning, the IHF boss said "yes, we have accepted his resignation." Batra had not only resigned from his post, but had also asked the IHF top brass to relinquish their posts owning moral responsibility for the Santiago fiasco.
Gill said that there was nothing wrong with Indian hockey and the failure to qualify for the Beijing Olympics was mainly because of "one bad day" during the qualifying tournament.
{{/usCountry}}Gill said that there was nothing wrong with Indian hockey and the failure to qualify for the Beijing Olympics was mainly because of "one bad day" during the qualifying tournament.
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