India hires Khalid Jamil as new head coach after Xavi and Pep Guardiola hoax applications

NEW DELHI (AP) — After discarding hoax applications from Xavi and Pep Guardiola, the All India Football Federation hired Khalid Jamil as the new head coach of the national team on Friday.

The AIFF admitted last week that proposed candidacies received from former Barcelona coach Xavi and Manchester City manager Guardiola, which had been disclosed to domestic media two days earlier, were not genuine.

Instead, Jamil, one of more than 170 real applicants to coach India, is the first domestic coach to take the position for 13 years and succeeds Manolo Marquez after the Spaniard departed in July after 11 months and just one win.

Jamil has won India’s top league prize as a player, in 2005, and also as head coach of Aizawl FC in 2017. The 49-year-old took over Indian Super League club Jamshedpur in 2023, taking it to the final of the 2025 Super Cup.

The AIFF said in a statement that committee members Shabbir Ali and Armando Colaco had pushed for a local candidate from a three-man shortlist — that also contained Stephen Constantine, the British coach with two previous spells in charge of India, as well as Slovenia’s Stefan Tarkovic — in a bid to give Indian coaching a boost.

Jamil’s major task is to recover from a poor start in qualification for the 2027 Asian Cup, which saw India, ranked No. 133 in the world, collect just one point from the opening two games in its quest to make a third successive appearance at the quadrennial tournament. Only the winner of the four-team group will advance to Saudi Arabia. Qualification resumes in October.

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