Indian women's football team coach Thomas Dennerby on Wednesday squarely blamed the AFC for the COVID-19 outbreak that led to the country's ouster from the ongoing Asian Cup here, alleging that his players were infected by the hotel staff in a bio-bubble that was not "foolproof". In a scathing attack on the continental body, Dennerby said India's dream of taking a shot at the FIFA World Cup was shattered not because of any fault of the players but due to the weak bio-bubble created by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). He said the AFC did not show any "respect, compassion, empathy" to the team to deal with the "extraordinary" situation in such a high-stake tournament.
"We were all negative of COVID when we reached team hotel (on Jan 13) and after arrival tests. The first positive case came on the day we went out of hotel for training and a day later (January 17), seven hotel staff tested positive. It is not rocket science to know how the outbreak came," he told PTI after a virtual media interaction. "The first huge outbreak was among the hotel staff. From my point of view, it's very clear where it (COVID) started, it definitely did not start in the team. It came from the AFC bubble inside the hotel," he said. "The hotel staff was tested for every six days and not every three days as done in case of teams. We know tests were conducted on hotel staff on Jan 11 and then on Jan 17 and seven positive cases were known on Jan 18. But the information was given only on Jan 19 afternoon. What was AFC doing for whole one day, we don't know." India were forced out of the AFC Women's Asian Cup on Sunday after a dozen COVID-19 cases among their players led to the cancellation of a group match against Chinese Taipei minutes before kickoff here. The AFC had said given the situation, Article 4.1 of the tournament rules came into effect, which made it clear that if a team failed to assemble for a match, it would be "considered to have withdrawn from the relevant Competition."
Dennerby said the AFC should have asked the infected hotel staff to leave immediately and not have any contact with players. "We don't know why the AFC did not take immediate action. AFC should have called the hotel directly and asked the infected staff to immediately leave and not to have any contact with players," said the Swede who will also coach the Indian team in the FIFA Women's U-17 World Cup in October. "Several hotel staff infected with COVID, including team India coordinator, kitchen staff, chef, housekeeping, service staff, all of them taking care of us, cooking and serving food, cleaning our rooms, while we were inside isolated in our rooms, still the AFC waited for a whole day."