The Sports-India Community

Thanks SaniaFan for the comment. I was wondering how they looked. Clearly we are a better team than we were 5 years ago. I had given only a 33% chance for a tie or a win, though China is not doing terribly well either. China seems to have a finishing problem lately, anyway, and it continued against us. That we created quite a few chances to score is what I noticed though.

By the way, this was the 18th match between India and China. Curiously we have NEVER played them in China. The last match against them was at Kochi in 1997. Curiously we have NEVER beaten them either. This was the 6th draw.

Constantine was complaining that there was no preparation time, as many players were playing ISL on the 7th and the team got together in Delhi only by 8th noon. They practiced for one day on the 9th, and flew to China on the 10th. A couple of days in Suzhou, and they played this match. It is pretty impressive that the team that hadn't played together for many months just got together, went to China and came back with an unexpected draw. I am sure that will give them a good morale boost. We need to play some good friendlies from now on out though, before the AFC championships in January.

Our next friendly is in two weeks - against #112 Jordan in Amman, as we are down to only two months to go for the AFC championship in UAE.

Meanwhile our October ranking that came out a few days ago, was unchanged from our September ranking - at #97. The draw against #76 China in the away match did not add anything to the points. We have 1245 points as against 1244 in September.

It seems that our friendly in Amman against #112 Jordan on Saturday is probably getting cancelled because one batch of Indians got stuck at Kuwait due to some rain situation for 24 hours and reach there only the day before the game. Jordan is having a flash flood problem also, to add to the issue.

Goal.com says that it is cancelled - https://www.goal.com/en-in/news/india-j ... aozaiauaow

But sportskeeda says that Jordan is supposed to make a call on Saturday morning - https://www.sportskeeda.com/football/in ... iddle-east

Now we have only one match left for preparations, before the AFC championships in January. That is against #84 Oman on Dec 27th.

They played after all... So the Indian newspapers who kept reporting that this game was cancelled, were wrong.

But we lost 1-2 to Jordan today. It seems Jordan got their first goal on a fluke (or big mistake by Gurpreet) as their goalie's kick went into our goal, with Gurpreet being out of position. I am sure we will see that goal in blooper videos later. Nishu Kumar (on his international debut!) got a goal for us in the 61st minute to make it 1-2 but that was it. Chhettri is injured and was not in the team.

Pretty bothersome that we have again hit a patch of not scoring goals. Just at a bad time. Hope everything clicks within 2 months for AFC.

Here is the blooper goal that Gurpreet allowed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGyHHlQ60O4 ... Bad/high bounce, but Gurpreet should've been better prepared. What a kick by that goalie though!

Gurpreet had a save on a penalty kick, before this mishap. But everybody will forget that, and he will for ever be part of "greatest goalie goals" or "goalie bloopers" videos!

Disappointing loss by India as Jordan apparently dominated the match statistically also. Perhaps, the logistics difficulties had a lot to do with it, so hopefully they will learn to get there earlier in their next matches...

Looks like FIFA will need to tweak the ranking system pretty soon. Things are hardly changing in the ranking, unlike in the previous ranking system. The loss against Jordan caused no damage, and we stayed at #97 in the rankings that came out a couple of days ago. But the again, that is probably what is intended. Jordan was not ranked much below us, at #112, and a loss to them in a friendly shouldn't be a big deal. Jordan moved up to #109.

India stayed at #97 in the december 20th ranking.

Today we played #82 Oman in Abudhabu for the final friendly before the AFC championships. Apparently we looked quite good, as we held them to a 0-0 draw.

Jay

So, now what will be our rating? Maybe the Thais were not that wrong to be irritated although they themselves are no great shakes.

I don't think our ratings will drop a whole lot, and it still looks like we are quite legit to be inside at least top-110 if not top-100, but we could have had a lot more momentum for a further rise, had we gone into the final 16 or maybe even a final-8 in AFC that we probably were capable of, with some luck. No such luck came our way. ISL etc could have used more attention to football too. Not to be.

But we have come a long way in the last 4 years. Remember that we had the 2nd youngest team playing the AFCs too.

Sad to see that Anas Edathodika retired from International football, all heartbroken after the Bahrain loss. He and Jinghan were rocks at the back for the last couple of years. He retired after just 19 caps for India since March 2017, where we went 11-4-4. Not shabby at all, but he is gone. Thank you, Anas!

In the latest FIFA rankings, our ranking goes down to #103 after the AFC Asian Cup.

jaydeep wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 3:54 amIn the latest FIFA rankings, our ranking goes down to #103 after the AFC Asian Cup.

Yeah, this new ranking system is too slow for football. They will need to dump it or adjust it soon. It is not reflecting the changes in team quality all that well. Our ranking is probably okay, still... but ranks need to change a bit more in response to wins and losses.

Yes Jay, agree with you ... In the near future FIFA needs to retweak this new ranking system.