AIFF house in disorder, blame the foreign hand

Despite the fact that Churchill Brothers’ first appeal was turned down, they are adamant. President Alemao Churchill says, ‘‘We plan to appeal once again to allow us to play in the elite league. We have two foreigners — Yusif Yakubu and Marcos Pareira — in our side, but if our appeal falls on deaf ears, we will have no choice but to release them and disband the team.’’

While Churchill is thinking of pulling the down the curtain, there is another Goan club which has gone ahead and done it. The Cabral Sports club — it has qualified for the second division — today submitted a letter to the Goan Football Association informing it of their decision to disband the team.

In the letter to the GFA, president Francisco Cabral has stated that the earlier decision of the AIFF to ban foreign players from playing in the second division had deprived them of a chance to qualify for the elite league as they had two good foreigners who are now playing for Fransa Pax.

‘‘Now the AIFF has revoked its decision but we have no quality players left as nine of our players have signed for other clubs during the inter-state transfers.

“Being a low budget club, we are finding it difficult to recruit quality players now,’’ Cabral has added.

Kolkata side Tollygunge Agragami, who too have been relegated this season, face a problem of different kind. Club secretary Mantoo Ghosh says: ‘‘We had initially planned on a low-budget side for next season. But after yesterday’s AIFF ruling, we will again have to go in search of sponsors to provide us the money to recruit foreigners. We will have to do it fast since we hadn’t planned to recruit foreigners for the local league also.’’