India Football Coach Igor Stimac Picked Players In Starting XI With Astrologer's Help, Says Report

Stimac has been with the national men's football team for more than four years now. The astrologer with who he was in touch to pick the side got paid reportedly Rs 15 lakh by AIFF.

Indian football coach Igor Stimac. (Source: ANI)

A football match is usually won by planninng well, being tactically astute, performing on the field and being at the peak of fitness for the 90 minutes or so. But the Indian football team coach Igor Stimac found a new way to fix the team's issues. He did so by taking help of an astrologer during the Asia Cup qualifiers played in June. As per an Indian Express report, Stimac used to send the squad and their details before every match and then waited for Astrologer's prediction on every player so that he could finalise the playing XI.

The astrologer's name is Bhupesh Sharma and after receiving the names of the probables, he would send the list back to Stimac over Whatsapp with the remarks of each player, based on which the coach would pick the team.

The remarks would read as 'Good;, 'can do very well', and 'a below average day'. The report states that Stimac did not pick two big names in the Afghanistan clash on June 11, based on the astronger's prediction. There are 100s of message exchanges between Bhupesh and Stimac during May and June. In this period, India played Jordan and three matches in Asia Cup qualifiers in Cambodia, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.

The suggestions from Bhupesh were on various topics. Apart from helping picking the team for national team, he also predicted future of some young players, said the report.

Back then, the president of All India Football Federation (AIFF) was Praful Patel. But he did not know about anything of this sort during his tenure. However, secretary-general of AIFF Kushal Das admitted that it was him who introduced Bhupesh to Stimac in May 2022.

“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.

Das added that he and Stimac were worried if India would qualify for Asian Cup and that led to them getting in touch with the astrologer.

Stimac said that he was advised to take help of Bhupesh and see if it helped the team. Stimac says that when he got to know the payout for the astrologer, he was shocked. The astrologer was reportedly paid a sum of Rs 12 to 15 lakh for his services. Stimac said that when he had asked for an assistant coach, he had not got any reply.