The women from Gokulam Kerala played a game of football with the boys from an Uzbekistan club, Phoenix, at Tashkent on Sunday. That friendly wasn’t on the itinerary when the Gokulam players boarded the flight from the Calicut International Airport here on August 15.
They had travelled to Uzbekistan to play at the AFC Asian Women’s Club championship and their first match was scheduled to be played on August 23, against Sogdiana. Only after they reached Tashkent did they come to know that they had been disqualified from the tournament as a result of FIFA’s ban of the AIFF ‘for undue influence from third parties.’
