Houghton presents his case, final hearing likely next week

Many thought it would be decision day in New Delhi when national coach Bob Houghton would appear infront of the three member AIFF Panel - Subrata Dutta, Ankur Datta and C.R. Viswanathan - with also General Secretary Kushal Das present. But today Bob only presented his side of the three point show cause notice with Supreme Court advocate Anish Dayal by his side. Dayal is a specialist in media, sports and entertainment law and has IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals are amongst his clients.

The hearing latest less then 30 minutes with Bob presenting his case in writing at Football House, so the panel decided to take a few days time to go through the documents and then fix another date of meeting. Tentatively the panel would meet again on April 20 with Bob Houghton also having to be present.

After the hearing advocate Dayal told the media, "We have denied all the charges levelled against the coach. We have submitted that all of the charges are baseless. We are expecting a fair decision."

"We have not mentioned anything about giving evidence against the charges. We will wait what the panel says in further proceedings," Dayal added.

Meanwhile the AIFF General Secretary Kushal Das told the media, "They filed a written reply which expectedly denied any racist attack. The committee will examine the response and will arrive at a decision ahead of the second meeting in eight days time."