Indian football on Tuesday was rocked by claims that the national team was picked on the advice of an expensive astrologer for last year’s Asian Cup qualifiers. According to a report in The Indian Express, close to 100 messages were exchanged in May-June 2022 between national coach Igor Stimac and the astrologer Bhupesh Sharma, who hails from Delhi NCR area. (More Football News)
The report also claims that the astrologer Sharma was introduced to Stimac by AIFF (All India Football Federation) secretary-general Kushal Das in May 2022. The report quotes Das as saying that Sharma was paid Rs 12-15 lakh for two months work.
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Before a must-win Asian Cup qualifier against Afghanistan, Stimac referred the names of 11 probables to astrologer Sharma. Sharma replied to Stimac within hours with a remark besides each name in the list. 'Good', 'can do very well', 'a below average day', 'needs to avoid over confidence' were some of his comments about the players.
This process was followed for other games as well. In all, India played four matches in the May-June 2022 period. On one occasion, Sharma was also provided birth details of players.
Das admitted introducing Sharma to Stimac.
“I met him at a meeting. He (Sharma) had worked for a lot of telecom companies and Bollywood personalities. What they presented was that astrological timings and the current phase of players can help motivate people into taking the right decisions,” Das told The Indian Express.
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He added, “That time, I was worried if India would qualify for the Asian Cup and so was Igor, let me be very honest. It was not a comfortable situation. For me, the most important thing was that India should qualify. So I told him (Sharma) that I will put you in touch with the coach and if he likes it, he thinks your services can be utilised, he can get back to me. Igor was very convinced and they were in Kolkata throughout.”
When Stimac was quizzed as to why he took the astrologer's advice and acted on it, the Croatian said, "Bhupesh was recommended to me and I was convinced (by others) that I have to check upon his possible effects in sports…No more than that. I requested another foreign assistant coach which was never even considered and was shocked to find out the size of Bhupesh’s contract.”
