Bio-bubble breach: Impact on India's image and women's football

“It’s life, isn’t it?” Sujata Kar says. A former national team player, and an age group coach with Kolkata Police, Kar has nothing but sympathy for the 23 women with shattered dreams currently in isolation (in more ways than one) in Mumbai right now.

Sunday, January 23, evening was supposed to be a big step towards the realisation of a dream — when the Indian women were supposed to take on Chinese Taipei in their second of three group stage encounters at the AFC Women’s Asian Cup. The match was scheduled to kick off at 7.30 pm, but an hour prior, it was clear that something was wrong.

The Chinese Taipei players had arrived at the stadium, but the Indians were nowhere to be seen. Rumour, became conjecture, before becoming fact. At 7.32 pm, came the news — India wouldn’t be able to field a team for the game; 13 of the 23-woman squad had tested positive for Covid-19. They were out of the game — and subsequently, according to rules, out of the tournament, all their previous results declared null and void. 

The backlash and bewilderment has been swift and accurate. In a statement, All India Football Federation (AIFF) President Praful Patel advised calm, and asked that “let there be no fingers pointed at any”. Early on January 26, though, his advice seems to have been ignored by no less than the head coach of the team, Thomas Dennerby. “Honestly, we are not happy with the AFC’s (Asian Football Confederation) tournament organisation and lack of solutions,” Dennerby said in a press statement. “One way, it destroyed our dreams.”

Dennerby’s accusations were mainly focused on how the AFC did not test the hotel staff in the bubble regularly enough, and upon finding positives, failed to inform the team. “I think that was an unprofessional way to handle it in an AFC bubble, no explanation can be good enough,” he said. In the high-stakes game of administrative poker, AIFF has shown its cards — they are victims, not the villains. The AFC’s rebuttal is yet to come, and will likely cast more shadow on what is a damaging situation.

The questions are simple. If the blame does indeed fall on AFC, then how come they have managed to centre this negligence solely around the Indian team’s bio-bubble (no other team was in the hotel India were booked into and no other team has experienced such a massive outbreak; cases have been minimal)? Additionally, a clause in the AFC’s protocols for tournaments staged during the pandemic states that “the host country shall be responsible for implementing preventive measures, in all control access areas, in compliance with medical protocol set by the AFC…”, which leads fingers to point the other way.

In the days to come, more details will emerge. But the damage has been done. Not just to a team’s ambitions and aspirations but also to the reputation of the AIFF, the sports ministry, the state and the Indian government. The brand that is India as a sports destination capable of hosting international events has suffered a blow. 

“We live in precarious times; and let’s be fair, this kind of thing is always an omnipresent threat today,” Bengaluru-based brand strategist Harish Bijoor says. “We have seen that sports bubbles have become a regular thing. Almost a norm. In that situation, when visiting teams will look at a host team suffering such a breach and shudder, it hurts credibility a lot.”

Football in India has been eagerly looking to expand its continental and global sports footprint, by bidding for and hosting several big-stage events over the past few years. The experience of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup may well turn out to be a watershed moment. India, after all, are preparing to host the FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup later this year and the Women’s Asian Cup was, in Patel’s own words, supposed to “serve as a template for the event”. 

These high-profile events are a nationalist muscle flex, a way to show that India has arrived. But Bijoor says that in India, outside of cricket, sports events tend to not be profitable at all. Meant to bring footfall and eyeballs to the hosts, in Covid times, the stakes have become higher. “The footfall in terms of spectators, visitors, tourists, anyway minimal in India, has completely gone because of these bubbles and closed stadiums,” he says, adding, “The virtual eyeballs, broadcast rights etc, are anyway minimal, and will suffer more if the national team doesn’t play.”

An additional thought process in hosting these events, often quoted by federations, is that they will create interest in the game, generate investment and lead to expansion at the grassroots. So far, this methodology has failed. Hashtags, and advertising slogans aside (Blue Tigresses is the one going around), little else really maxes out. 

India’s hosting of the 2017 FIFA U17 World Cup has not led to the expected upliftment of the game at the junior levels. Any expected investment in the big leagues has also stumbled. In anything outside of the corporate-backed franchise league, the Indian Super League (ISL), the money pouring in has been minimal. For the women’s game, things have always been infinitely worse. 

Samit Sinha, founder of Alchemist Brand Consulting, empathises with the situation, and says that the unprecedented times and the situations caused because of it will ensure that “perhaps less mud will stick” when the brickbats subside. He hopes that onlookers will forget the administrative faux pas and instead invest in those who play the sport. “Teams lose. Investing in them is a risk,” he says. “Sure, in this case it has happened outside the sport, and that will hurt, but it may not be held against them too much. In the long run, people may forget.”

And when it comes to women’s football, the inconvenient truth is that there is a tendency to do so easily. This event was supposed to be the Indian team’s time in the sun, an opportunity for 23 to show what millions of other girls can do with the sport in the country. For a team always relegated to the shadows, TV time, column space and social media traffic mattered. People, even just those watching, would learn names, relate to the game and perhaps realise that girls play football too. 

The team’s next big assignment will be the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, later this year. What happens in between is up in the air. The federation hasn’t conducted the Indian Women’s League (IWL) since 2020. The 2022 edition supposed to be held in April will be pushed further back, owing to many states not having managed to complete their state leagues (which serve as qualifiers). AIFF General Secretary Kushal Das’s statement did not inspire confidence. “We aren’t sure when they will be able to finish it,” he said. “So, the IWL might have to be delayed although we will still try to hold it in April.” There is no reason to believe change won’t happen, but as of now there is no reason to believe it will either. We are back to square one.

“It’s life and it’s football too, isn’t it?” Kar says. “You go a goal down, you pick yourself up and try and equalise. Right now, the main thing is to get the girls healthy and safe. And then we get back to kick off.” It is worth asking, though, if there will still remain a game to play.