By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Indian football is edging closer to having a full-time technical director again with the All India Football Federation’s technical committee deciding to ask the four shortlisted candidates to appear for interviews towards the end of the month.This was decided at a meeting of the committee, chaired by former footballer Shyam Thapa, at the AIFF headquarters on Monday.

The four prospects are Gaioz Dersadze from Georgia, Doru Isac from Romania, Prof Jorge Castelo from Portugal and former technical director Scott O’Donnell from Australia. “We will have a chat with all the shortlisted candidates to understand their vision and objective. The process will be completed within the next fortnight,” said Thapa.

Dersadze has been with the Asian Football Confederation in a technical role since 2018, before which he was with the UEFA for more than a decade. Isac’s claim to fame was working as an assistant to former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger when the latter was manager of Japanese club Nagoya Grampus. He is currently technical director at Yokohama F Marinos. Castelo too has worked with some big names including the likes of former Real Madrid and Iran manager Carlos Queiroz.

The panel also discussed the appointment of a new coach for the national team. “The committee and the secretariat are in the process of further shortlisting the candidates which would be completed within the next two weeks, for the appointment to take place within the scheduled deadline of the mid-week of May,” a statement by the AIFF said. More than 40 coaches had applied though the committee will only deliberate upon a heavily pruned shortlist that will have no more than a dozen names.

The meeting was attended by AIFF general secretary Kushal Das, national team director Abhishek Yadav, Henry Menezes, Ishfaq Ahmed, Pradip Datta, GP Palguna and Sunder Raman (via video-conference). I-League CEO Sunando Dhar, AIFF general manager Swati Kothari and outgoing technical director Savio Medeira were also present.