Stephen in the Media

INDIAN SUMMER (11 May 2004)

By Joe Bernstein

Being manager of India is no ordinary job. Englishman Stephen Constantine has 1.3billion people to please and trips to North Korea and Iran to navigate.
Stephen Constantine played his football with non-League Enfield and in Cyprus but his managerial career has taken him all over the world.

After spells working in the US and Cyprus, he was recommended by The FA for the Nepal job in 1999.

He came back to work at Bournemouth’s Centre of Excellence but took off again in 2002 to take charge of India. India are currently in a World Cup qualifying group with Japan, Oman and Singapore.

India has a population of 1.3 billion. Surely that's the biggest selection headache of all time?

Cricket is so dominant, football doesn’t have a big pool of players to choose from. There are only 12 teams in the top league.

But it doesn’t mean the game isn’t popular, we had 75,000 for our last World Cup qualifier against Oman and the stadium was really humming. Unfortunately, the Indian Government won’t allow me to pick players who don’t have Indian passports.

There are a couple of guys in England Harpal Singh and Michael Chopra who would be eligible under Fifa regulations but the Indian rules won’t allow it. There are plans to change it and the first stage has been ratified. I rang Harpal twice when he was at Bradford and he never got in touch.

If I am allowed to pick Chopra, I will probably try to make contact. If he thinks he might not be good enough for the England senior side, it might be a good move for him to play for India. He would be a hero.

What is the relationship with cricket?

The cricketers won the World Cup 20 years ago and are still successful, they reached the last World Cup Final. So the Government gives them a lot of support and the game is marketed very well.

I found it strange that football hasn’t got a sponsor to bring a Premiership team over to India for a pre-season tour because they would gain half a million new fans immediately.

I’ve met the Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly a couple of times, he used to pay football before he went into cricket full-time. Our current Fifa ranking is 136th and we will have to try and improve that to bring money into the game.

How is your World Cup qualification campaign going?

We’ve beaten Singapore 1-0 but lost 5-1 to Oman. Our next match is a real biggie, in Japan on June 9th. Japan are one of the real forces in Asian football alongside South Korea and Iran; our return match against them is in Calcutta in September.

Which Premiership teams do Indians support?

It’s a prerequisite of a national team player to support Arsenal, because they are my club! Generally, Indians follow the Premier League closely and Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal all have their fans.

Chelsea made a big impact in this part of the world by playing in the Malaysian Cup pre-season and the publicity that Abramovich has given them has had a big effect. So Chelsea have become popular quite quickly.

What was the temperature for your last home game?

It was about 90 degrees when we played Oman in Kerela and even hotter against Singapore, 36 degrees Celsius (96 Farenheit)

Which language is used at training camp?

There are 70 languages in India, none of them is common to everyone. Most of the boys have a basic understanding of English so I use that for my demos.

60% of the country speak Hindi so I’ve got command of the 40 words of Hindi I need to use in football games.

What is the strangest place that you have visited?

I would have to say North Korea, it was surreal. They had four-lane highways but no cars on them. There were no shops, and people walked around in the same clothes – black or olive green long-sleeve jackets with little pictures of President Kim Jong-Il on the lapels.

There were 70,000 spectators at our game you could have heard a pin drop until they scored, when they all started clapping very politely.

When we arrived at the airport, security took our mobile phones and didn’t return them until we left the country. They said if we were caught with a mobile in the country, it would be confiscated and not returned.

We had three Korean agents with us wherever we went on the trip. Even if we went from one floor to another on the hotel, they would follow us.

I am doing a Fifa course in Iran next month, I have been there before and know they are absolutely football-mad.

Will you be applying for any jobs in England over the summer?

I have another year on my contract in India. If an opportunity came up in England I would look at it, but I don’t think I will go round applying at the moment.

The difficulty for me is that clubs in England want people with experience of English football or someone well-known in English football. I have all the coaching qualifications but I don’t think they count as much as direct experience.

A second division club want managers who know what the second division is all about.