The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has served a show cause notice on Churchill Alemao, patron of Goan football club Churchill Brothers, for his recent comments against match officials and referred him to the disciplinary committee.
"We are pained to read in newspapers about the comments made by you on the Indian officials (referees and assistant). It is regrettable that you have chosen to make these comments at a press conference organized in connection with the AFC Cup match between your club and Al Hilal from Yemen," AIFF General secretary Alberto Colaco wrote in a strongly worded letter to Alemao on Wednesday.
The AIFF general secretary said the comments were in bad taste and that the Churchill Brothers patron had cast baseless allegations on the match officials and also the AIFF.
The statements, AIFF pointed out, are in violation of Article 36(5) of the I-League regulations as well as the code of ethics and disciplinary code of the AIFF.
The AIFF has asked Alemao to reply within 7 days and it is more than likely that he may be asked to appear before the disciplinary committee of the AIFF to plead his case. Should Alemao choose to ignore the show cause, the AIFF said the disciplinary committee would decide the matter with the available documents.
The outspoken Alemao said some of the Indian referees were inept at their job and favoured certain teams.
"I have written to the AIFF many times but have not received any reply nor have they punished the referees for their mistakes. Because of this we have to suffer many times," Alemao had said.
"We can see that the decisions given by them are wrong in the video report. The match commissioners who comes to see the match does not report this in his report submitted to the AIFF", he said.
"It's not that the foreign referees don't make mistakes. They are punished for their mistakes. Instead, in India the clubs are punished for their remarks on referees while the referees are set scot free," Alemao said.
