India needs good coaches to produce better footballers: Lothar Matthaus

Kolkata, Nov 17 (PTI) Only best coaches can produce good football players and India will need to bring in legends and former players of the game to train their coaches, says German football legend Lothar Matthaus.

Matthaus said India, the world’s most populated country, cannot be in a situation where it does not play in the football World Cup while smaller countries like Cape Verde make it to the global event.

“You get good footballers only when they learn from the best coaches. India needs good coaches to produce better footballers,” Matthaus, a member of Germany's 1990 World Cup-winning team, told the media here on Sunday.

“A good teacher makes a good student. And when you have a bad teacher, or a bad professor, you don’t get good students. To start, you bring the legends, ex-players and reputed coaches to India to teach your coaches. Then these coaches can help the new generation of players. You have to start this at the school level.” Matthaus cited the example of Cape Verde, which will play in next year’s World Cup despite having only a million people as their population.

“For example Cape Verde, which has a population of just half a million people, is going to the World Cup. You have the highest population in the world and you don’t go to the World Cup? This cannot be,” Matthaus said.

“You have to find a system which will involve the football federation, the Government, the clubs and the academies to work for a common goal like you have in cricket, hockey or chess where you have produced world champions,” said Matthaus, the brand ambassador of the Bengal Super League.

Matthaus admitted that Germany has lacked passion and camaraderie for a while now, given that the former World Cup winners were eliminated from the group stages in the last two editions of the competition.

“This is not what we expect from the national team,” he said, adding, “lack of passion and camaraderie,” as the reasons behind their ordinary show.

“We need the passion that was our plus factor in the 80s. We used to play with passion and love. We were playing together and this is what I am missing now in the German team." “But this is a job for the coach. And when the coach can bring this team together like maybe the way we used to be 10, 15 or 30 years ago, Germany can again be the team to be in the circle of the favourites,” he added. PTI DDV ATK