The manager of Pakistan hockey team, Hasan Sardar, has submitted his resignation along with a message to the government of Pakistan that the government could not support the team, then it should just shut down the national sport in the country.
“The players in Pakistan have been deprived of their daily allowances when the Indian players have been drawing Rs200,000 (Indian rupees) in monthly salaries. There’s little to compare in the present scenario,” Sardar, a former renowned hockey Olympian, told PPI.
Sardar also told the government that the national sport should also be shut down because the nation keeps expecting good results, but it was impossible to achieve that without proper support.
Pakistan, whose record of most number of World Cup titles is still intact after Belgium defeated Netherlands in the final, couldn’t win even a single game in the entire tournament. The best they did was a 1-1 draw against Malaysia.
The green-shirts managed to make it to the crossover stage – thanks to Malaysia for having an even worse goal difference than Pakistan. “We need a foreign coach for a long-term period of two to four years and not just few months. But the federation doesn’t have enough money to do that,” said the former skipper.
“More importantly, players must have job security. Indian states offer DSP level Police jobs to hockey players. We also need to do that and it would also be beneficial for Police as well since players are fitter and disciplined and could easily be trained and inducted. Citizens would also respect them,” he said.
Head coach Tauqeer Dar and assistant Danish Kaleem have already stepped down. Foreign Dutch Coach Roelant Oltmans had also resigned few months back after the men in green failed to perform well in Asian Games in Jakarta.
Sardar said that Oltmans’ resignation was a setback as he started his job just few months back and the World Cup was just around the corner. Sardar, an Olympics and World Cup gold medalist, said that the nation has been obsessed with Pakistan’s glorious past in the game of hockey and expect them to perform well when the ground reality is greatly different.
“If the government can’t support the game then it should shut it down so that nation doesn’t expect anything,” lamented Sardar. He said that there’s plenty to be done if the country wants to raise the national team’s performance bar in the international arena as other teams have been progressing by leaps and bounds.
He said that coaches must be given time while to keep the interest of the players alive, they need to be remunerated properly and at least there should be job security for them.