Technical committee will be more active: Bhutia

New Delhi, May 6 (IANS):

Former India football captain and current chairman of the All India Football Federation?s (AIFF) technical committee Monday said he wanted to make the committee more active.

Bhutia, who is the first active player to be appointed the technical committee chairman, said his biggest challenge was to do some real work.

“My biggest challenge is to do some real work. It should not be like other technical committees in the government, we want to to utilise the powers we have,” Bhutia told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of Pepsico-AFDP “Kick for Hope” programme.

Bhutia replaced former AIFF vice-president C.R. Viswanathan as the chairman. Former footballers Parminder Singh, Prasun Banerjee and Henry Menzes along with officials Lalnghinglova Hmar and Savio Messias are the other members of the committee.

“Main focus will be to do a lot of work at the grassroots level. We don’t just want to sit around and do nothing. We want to sit down and exchange ideas and discuss more issues,” said Bhutia.

Before the appointment of Bhutia, the technical committee had been lambasted by former players and officials for getting no work done and meeting just once in three years.

The technical committee has generally been used by the AIFF as a tool to get rid of national coaches Syed Nayeemuddin and Bob Houghton.

“I want to make sure the committee meets regularly and not like previous occasions. We want to make serious plans for football in India looking at the future,” Bhutia said.