PANAJI:

Former England U-21 coach and one of England’s greatest defenders, Stuart Pearce , is among the shortlisted names for the vacant India under-17 coaching vacancy.The All India Football Federation ( AIFF ) has ruled out the possibility of bringing in a high-profile coach to replace Nicolai Adam as head coach of India’s under-17 squad for the 2017 World Cup at home and are instead favouring a coach with good experience at the youth level.The advisory committee of the AIFF is going through 75 applications from across the world and are expected to come up with a shortlist of five candidates on Monday. The shortlist will almost certainly include Stuart Pearce, who coached Great Britain Olympic team at London 2012.“We have a shortlist of about seven coaches at the moment from 75 applications. We will review the applications once again on Monday and then start video calls with all these names. May be, once we have an idea of what each coach can bring to the team, we will call the final two candidates for an interview here,” said AIFF general secretary Kushal Das.“We are not looking at a big name. We are looking at someone with good youth experience who has managed good teams. If he has been with the national teams, it’s a plus for us. We are essentially on the lookout for a father figure who will take care of the kids and provide them with a competitive edge,” said Das.The biggest name on the shortlist is former England U-21 coach and one of England’s greatest defenders, Stuart Pearce. Pearce has had club spells in charge of Manchester City and Nottingham Forest but it is with the England under-21s – whom he coached for six years – that he spent the longest time. He also coached Great Britain Olympic team at London 2012.Another familiar name on the shortlist is former AIFF technical director and Under-19 coach Colm Toal, popularly called Collin, who spent seven years in India and has 37 years of coaching experience. Toal was recently appointed technical director at Minerva Punjab FC but quit after an altercation with owner Ranjit Bajaj over team selection.The AIFF wants to have a new coach in place before March 1 and had made it clear that coaches who are willing to take up the assignment at short notice would be preferred.The AIFF were forced to look out for a new coach just eight months before the Fifa Under-17 World Cup after allegations of physical and verbal abuse against Nicolai with whom they parted ways last week.