Are termination safeguards adequate in Igor Stimac contract?

NEW DELHI: India's humiliating loss to Afghanistan in the World Cup qualifying campaign has shaken up the fans and the All India Football Federation (AIFF).

It is learnt that the all-powerful technical committee headed by IM Vijayan wondered "how Stimac can continue (as head coach)" after the shocking 1-2 defeat to the depleted Afghanistan side in Guwahati on March 26. As the call for removing Igor Stimac gets louder, AIFF president Kalyan Chaubey has constituted a five-member committee to talk to Stimac, after receiving the feedback from the technical committee.

Talks of a huge severance pay in case of sacking Stimac are also doing the rounds. Stimac draws a salary of $30,000 (Rs 25 lakh approximately) per month and in the absence of the severance clause with three months' notice period, the AIFF may end up paying him more than $ 750,000 (Rs 6.254 crore approximately) if the federation wants to sack him now.

AIFF's former legal advisor Nilanjan Bhattacharya, who had drawn Stimac's last contract on October 5, 2023, says otherwise. "There is no mention of severance pay in Stimac's contract when it was redrawn in October 2023, where adequate termination safeguards have been placed in the agreement in the interest of AIFF. Nowhere it says in the agreement that AIFF must pay the money. On the contrary, AIFF has adequate termination safeguards to remove Stimac without any compensation," Bhattacharya claimed. A copy of the contract is available with TOI.

Another former AIFF functionary said that AIFF has failed to build the case against Stimac and said there was no financial deterrence in the sacking of national coach. "The technical committee will decide and put it to the executive committee. In the EGM, the decision can be made. It needs smart work," he said.

It remains to be seen what decision the five-member committee of the federation takes now.


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