That was Alemao’s first yellow card offence. Bite he will because the new executive committee is determined to put him in his place from Day 1 with a strategy that includes postponing the very first executive body meeting from July 16, 2006 which he has ordered, to July 20, to show who’s boss. His second yellow card offence! Keep reading for the red card.
December 20, 2007
Boot’s On the Wrong Foot
The man lost the elections for the GFA executive committee but still said he won. Never mind that, you know it all by now. What was not reported was that on July 13, 2007 (a Friday, was that ominous?) at a Mapusa (Hotel Green Park) dinner-meet exclusively for Bardez clubs, he told the clubs without a semblance of pretence that they were free to vote for officials of their choice to the executive committee. But, for president they must vote him.
What Joaquim Alemao does not know now is where to get the Rs 50,000 assistance package he promised village clubs as the candy for their votes. Because, there are 170 clubs in Goa (eight are professional clubs) he promised that ‘special package’; which makes it 162 clubs left of which about five like Goa Police etc are institutional clubs. That makes it 157 village clubs who now expect to get a whopping Rs.78,50,000. That was Alemao’s first yellow card offence. Now where is he going to get that kind of dough? Not from the government or from the Sports Authority of Goa (which is the same thing) and certainly not from Sports Authority of Goa (SAG) because that portfolio has been retained by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat. One more Alemao made to bite the dust albeit on the football pitch.
And finally the red card
Bite he will because the new executive committee is determined to put him in his place from Day 1 with a strategy that includes postponing the very first executive body meeting from July 16, 2006 which he has ordered, to July 20, to show who’s boss. His second yellow card offence! Keep reading for the red card. Remember it was LION ROARS that first exposed the machinations he subsequently officially denied and which actually led to both the passive and active English media at least working around what I first exposed. Why keep reading? Because GFA does not want either his pre-election promise of a stadium or his post-election altered desire to lay an all-weather turf at the open Campal stadium. It simply wants a basic 5,000-seater stadium built on Campal’s parade ground essentially to revive Panjim’s dying football tradition and small club interest. It also says the cheaper and more practical option is to simply rebuild the Campal stadium that ex-chief minister Manohar Parrikar recklessly demolished for a car park for the International Film Festival of India. GFA wants its own stadium because SAG controls at its whim all the village playgrounds and is distinctly pro-cricket when it comes to the Fatorda stadium.
LION ROARS also has it that the GFA election was turned into a political circus. Thus, Dr. Rufino Monteiro’s campaign was accused of being BJP-supported because he lent his name to the controversial doctor’s pro-BJP support campaign in the Assembly elections, although the BJP does not have football in its political arsenal. Thus, while some BJP MLA’s who could, helped him; all the Congress MLA’s supported Joaquim Alemao. For example, all the three St. Andre’s clubs Siridao, Goa Velha and Agacaim supported the Congress.
