KATHMANDU, Aug 8: The Nepal National and International Players Association (NNIPA) has expressed strong reservation over the sudden sacking of assistant coach of national football team Raju Kaji Shakya from his duties.
President of the association Deepak Shrestha, who is now leading preparations of his karate team in Japan for the upcoming 2018 Asian Games, wrote on Facebook that all the players are saddened due to the sacking of former national team captain Shakya.
“We players are really sad after the most successful player of Nepali football Raju Kaji Shakya expressed his intense distaste for football. Everyone knows why he said that. Every association of different sports has fantastic ways of rewarding the players of their respective games,” Shrestha wrote. “I request all the associations, including football’s, to not reward their players like this. Players should not be made victims of political revenge.”
“We want to draw the attention of concerned authorities, National Sports Council (NSC), Nepal government and the Ministry of Youth and Sports in this regard,” he wrote.
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Shakya was an integral part of the team when Nepal won its first gold medal in the South Asian Games in 1984. Nepal also won the gold for the second time under the captaincy of Shakya in 1993. Likewise, Nepal won the first-ever official tournament AFC Solidarity Cup under the management of Shakya in 2016. Nepali football team has won three gold medals so far in the history of the South Asian Games (SAF, now known as SAG).
Shakya, who contributed to Nepal’s win four times, as a player and a coach, expressed his sadness stating “I regret playing football”, after he was sacked by the new leadership of the ANFA.
One of the evergreen heroes of Nepali football, Shakya had signed a one-year contract with the ANFA in December last year with the clause of handling the Nepal national team including the U-23 team. But after the ANFA got a new leadership of Karma Tshering Thapa, who was elected as the president from the General Assembly in May, the ANFA blocked Shakya’s salary. The football governing body also appointed Bal Gopal Maharjan, another national player, as the assistant coach to replace him.
Shakya has not been officially sacked yet. But, Sherpa had told the media that a person cannot take salaries working in two places, referring that Shakya is an employee at the NSC. Sherpa added that it is against the law of the country.
However, after realizing that Shakya had retired from the NSC, Sherpa changed his tone and told a television channel: “Now as we are in-charge, we will make our own team.”
At a time when the Shakya case has created a division among all the football stakeholders, the ANFA, according to its spokesperson Kiran Rai, will make an official announcement on this matter on Wednesday.
“This case has been talked about a lot. So, we will make an official statement after consultation with the ANFA officials including the president,” Rai said.
As his case has become a subject of heated debate among the Nepali sports fraternity, it has further saddened Shakya.
“I am a decent person. I never talked politics when I was in football career. I had a one-year contract with the ANFA, and I had been doing my job properly. They sacked me abruptly, yet I didn’t say anything,” he said. “I have no interest in getting involved in conflict. But, they have done injustice by sacking me, going against the agreement. To add to my anguish, some people have charged me with baseless allegations.”
