MARGAO
The Goa State football team taking part in the ongoing National Games were forced to shift their base from Margao to the coastal village of Benaulim as they were unhappy with the accommodation provided to them by the organisers.
The 25-member squad consisting of coaches and support staff were allotted seven rooms which were not sufficient to accommodate three people in each room.
Sources close to the team, which begin their campaign in the championship with a match against Services on October 30, disclosed that for six hours they requested the hotel management to allot them two more rooms and additional mattresses, a request which went unheeded.
Left with no choice, the Goa team made alternate arrangements and have since shifted base to a Benaulim hotel, in the larger interests of the team and the young players.
Besides hosts Goa and Services, the other teams in the group are Karnataka and Punjab. The other group consists of Kerala, Meghalaya, Manipur and Maharashtra.
Sources also informed that accommodation allotted to the Goa women’s football team is far from satisfactory but they have stay put in the same hotel allotted to them by the organisers.
The Goa Beach soccer team coached by former India captain Bruno Coutinho is housed in a hotel which is a stone throw away from the venue of the tournament.
The hotel is still in the midst of getting a facelift for the upcoming season which was evident from a lot of construction debris on its property when journalists visited the site to interview the team coaches and managers.
