Janneke Schopman on why Rani Rampal was sidelined: ‘She wasn’t good enough… couldn’t run’

Janneke Schopman stepped down from her role as the chief coach of Indian women’s hockey team on Friday just days after she spoke out about the treatment she had received from Hockey India.

The Dutch coach’s explosive interview about Hockey India officials coupled with the Indian women’s team’s inability to qualify for the Paris Olympics meant that Schopman parting ways with the Indian team was inevitable.

One of the issues that lingered on during Schopman’s two-and-a-half year stint at the helm of the women’s team was the exclusion of team talisman Rani Rampal from the side.

Under Rani’s captaincy, India had finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. But she had barely featured for the women’s team since Schopman took over the reins of the Indian team from compatriot Sjoerd Marijne.

India coach Janneke Schopman (Photo via Hockey India)

Schopman revealed that after the Tokyo Olympics she had told Rampal that “it was time”.

“Rani told me she played at the Tokyo Olympics injured. But she didn’t tell Sjoerd Marijne or me (at the Olympics itself). So I gave her a lot of time to recover. She was injured for a long time. She could only play one game, since the medical staff said that she cannot play back-to-back games in the Pro League. She played the game against Belgium and that’s when I made the decision that she’s not good enough to play in the Hockey World Cup and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. That was a message she didn’t want to hear. She didn’t agree,” Schopman told NNIS Sports.

“I supported her recovery, her rehab. I allowed her to leave the SAI campus and not be with the team because she couldn’t deal with all those things. If you’re a team player, you kind of need to be there. She was fit after that. But I didn’t think she was good enough… she can’t run!”

Janneke Schopman says working in India was extremely difficult for a woman

The Indian Express had recently reported how Schopman, the first female to coach the Indian hockey team, had broken down as she recollected her rocky stint with the Indian women’s hockey team. She had said that India was ‘extremely difficult for a woman’.

Schopman had claimed she felt ‘alone a lot in the last two years’, wasn’t ‘valued and respected’ by her employers Hockey India. She had also pointed out that the women’s team was receiving differential treatment as compared to the men’s hockey team.

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.