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Former England international Stuart Pearce and former AIFF technical director Colm Toal are amongst a shortlist of seven coaches that the AIFF has drawn up for the India Under-17 head coach role from 75 applications received.
The search was forced on the AIFF after they had to part ways with coach Nicolai Adam for allegations made by the players about their coaches behaviour.
Now the AIFF is searching for a replacement with India’s Under-17 to play the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup at home in October this year.
Former England international Stuart Pearce is the biggest name on the shortlist, having played 78 times for England besides a long club career mainly at Nottingham Forest as well as Wealdstone FC, Coventry City, Newcastle United, West Ham United and Manchester City.
Towards the end of this career, he coached Nottingham Forest as a caretaker manager, then Manchester City and for six years the England Under-21s, while also being a caretaker manager for England and coaching Great Britain at the 2012 London Olympics. Thereafter he coached his former club Nottingham Forest, but since February 2015 he has been out of a job.
The other name revealed amongst the shortlist is Colm Toal, a former India youth coach and AIFF Technical Director. He was with the AIFF from 2007 to 2014 and transformed the youth set-up of the AIFF, amongst other things advocating for an AIFF Youth team in the I-League as a developmental side as the Indian Arrows, brought out talent like Jeje Lalpekhlua, Gurpreet Singh Sandhu and Lalrindika Ralte.
Only recently Colm Toal was back in India as technical director of newly promoted Minerva Punjab FC, but left the club only a few weeks later due to differences of opinion.
But with his experience and knowledge of the Indian football scenario at youth level, Colm Toal is a candidate to consider, while Stuart Pearce is a big name but knows nothing about Indian football.
There are other candidates but the names are unknown at this stage.
