Football: Indian National Team news ...

[jayakris]

There is no relevance at all, really, to FIFA dates. Most of the time, when we schedule a team for a friendly, wether it is on a FIFA dates or not, it has counted in the rankings. Very occasionally (probably 2 or 3 matches we have played in the last 5-6 years out of 50 odd) you would find a country bringing such a substandard team that they themselves (or us, or a FIFA-accredited official) report it to FIFA as a tem not to be counted, I suppose. That was the case with Cameroon this time. There was one UAE(?) match that didn't count, as our coach (Armando, I think) made too many substitutions for whatever reason... May be one match in west indies which was set up with one week notice was not counted as they couldn't put up a proper team. There may have been another match sometime back like that. Anyway, very few such cases. Those really didn't affect the rankings one way or other.

Otherwise, whenever we played scheduled-friendlies, or friendlies in the middle east ahead of Asia Cup, or played all the Nehru trophies, and all the SAF matches, they have all counted properly for FIFA rankings. I am not sure if there is a rule that a team scheduled for the FIFA dates is automatically required by FIFA to be an official team (with some penalties attached to not calling in most of the national players). May be there is. But it makes no real difference for us. Anyway, not playing matches has not been our problem. Not winning enough against anybody ranked above 140 has been the problem, along with not playing enough at home, and playing too much in the middle east.

Kovermans may have said that if we focussed on the FIFA dates, we would have a much better chance to schedule a lot more of proper home-and-home friendlies, so that we can get a fair number of home matches also. In the last two years, we haphazardly scheduled matches (in the middle east, especially) and played almost 2/3rds of the matches abroad. Ideally we should push that up to 60% at home. That would raise our ranking a fair bit. I assume that is what Wim alluded to, and that the newspaper scribes had no clue what he was talking about....

Jay

[jayakris]

The new FIFA rankings came out and we moved a spot down to 169 with 104.63 points. The Cameroon matches did not count, of course. The draw against Nepal cost us 5.38 pts compared to a win.

To see how far down in the dumps we are,
we needed 167 pts, which means a 50% better performance, to even be #150
we needed 205 pts, which means a 100% better performance, to even be #140
we needed 268 pts, which means a 150% better performance, to be #125
we needed 348 pts, which means a 250% better performance, to be #100

Because of the 0.5, 0.3, and 0.2 age multipliers, you typically need half of the points in the current year and half from earlier years. We have 14.45 from 3 years back, none from 2 back, 25.20 from last year and 64.98 this year. Just about 38% from earlier years. Our past points will hardly help in anything for a while. We need to move up by making sure that we only play matches with high possibility of wins, to keep the yearly averaging divisor low at least for the latest year. It is at 16 now. Will be 13 after Novmber, 8 after December, 6 after February, and 3 after March (not including how many matches we play from now till then). Keep that number low for the averega points in the latest year to go up to around 125, which we can do, by just playing only a couple of patsies (teams below 150 give around 140 pts each).

Hope we will carefully plan whom we play in the coming months. My suggestion is to play just 2 easy (subcontinental) matches till next april, before we do anything. We can move up about 25 spots with that and then schedule some decent 100-140 range teams to try to make a further move. Have a couple of camps with Wim, to get the players more accustomed to the current system and ready to pull some upsets against near top-100 teams. Then we make a move next year. Need patience now. It is a long climb back to where we can be, but we need to be very smart in scheduling.

Jay

[gautam]

My suggestion is to play just 2 easy (subcontinental) matches till next april, before we do anything.

I guess the AIFF dint listen to you , India is scheduled to play Singapore in October and will be playing another one in November.

[prasen9]

Singapore is not that hard. I thought they were also around #160. You have to defeat Singapore if you want to move up. Where is the match? If it is at home, that is good scheduling --- going by Jay's suggestion, at least in spirit.

[gautam]

Singapore is not that hard. I thought they were also around #160. You have to defeat Singapore if you want to move up. Where is the match? If it is at home, that is good scheduling --- going by Jay's suggestion, at least in spirit.

Its an away match, there were news that India will be playing Singapore on home and away basis but there is news only of the away match. Also there are rumours that India might play some African nation ranked in 130-160s in November

[jayakris]

So I guess we are hellbent on remaining clueless. Argh! Jay

[gautam]

Thailand has also been confirmed for a friendly on November 14. AIFF is trying to arrange another friendly, possible teams for the third friendly could be Lebanon or Indonesia.

[trojan]

India will play nepal today in the final of Women's saff cup.

India defeated afghanistan 11-0 in the SF

[LIF2012]

Indian Football: India Beat Nepal And Clinch 2012 SAFF Women’s Championship ->> http://www.thehardtackle.com/2012/india ... champions/

[usaindian]

India u16 lost to Uzbekistan 2-3 in 2012 AFC U16 tourney last time it was 9-0 win for Uzbekistan in qualifers

[LIF2012]

India drew with Syria in their next match. Now next up in line is China.

India vs China Preview -> http://www.thehardtackle.com/2012/india ... a-preview/

[depleter]

India drew with Syria in their next match. Now next up in line is China.

India vs China Preview -> http://www.thehardtackle.com/2012/india ... a-preview/

India drew with china too...final score 2-2......

[LIF2012]

Great determination showed by the Indian colts. They drew the game by scoring a few second ahead of the final whistle. Well done boys!

[jayakris]

These kids are playing well! But need to win some, for points. Jay

[munnabhai]

Since these 16 year old kid are almost on par with China 16 year olds and assuming that these kids will progress at the same level, I guess India will be a top-100 level footballing nation in the year 2020.

Can't wait...