AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 5:36 pmMaking the last 16 is not enough. If we can draw or beat any of the middle-eastern teams, we will get better opponents in the 16. That may mean a trip to the final eight being hard to being next to impossible. Let's go.
Yes, let us win the pool itself with one more win. The group-A runner-up also doesn't have a great final-16, because it is against the runner-up of Group C, where KOR and CHN are the top two teams (probably CHN or KYR should finish runners-up there). Win the pool and we get the third place team from groups C, D or E.
Let's recognize Constantine again. He was let go and then came back. He has served Indian football well for a long time. Did Koevermans have any hand with any of the juniors?
He has absolutely done a fantastic job. He should've been never let go. Back in 2002-2005, he took an Indian team that had fallen from top-100 to top-125 over some 5-10 years, stopped the bleeding and kept us at that ranking for 3-4 years. He left, and we started dropping again - down to #160 within a year. Over a decade later, we were still below 160. He came back and we roared back up again.

The Indian media/press and football "analysts" don't like him, because he doesn't get too pally with them, and so he takes unnecessary criticism on all kinds of things. But the man has been doing his job, and he takes responsibility for his own decisions on team selection etc. In my opinion, he has picked the right guys, and has simply gone with whoever he thinks has the ability, staying away from regional biases about the Northeast and Goa and all that.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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jayakris wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 5:57 pm
Let's recognize Constantine again. He was let go and then came back. He has served Indian football well for a long time. Did Koevermans have any hand with any of the juniors?
...In my opinion, he has picked the right guys, and has simply gone with whoever he thinks has the ability, staying away from regional biases about the Northeast and Goa and all that.
It was a bold move to put the 21 year old Ashique Karuniyan in place of Jeje, who I believe has not scored a goal all year or something. See this - Stephen Constantine's half-time team talk inspires India to thumping win in Asian Cup. Ashique was the one who went in and caused the hand ball that led to Chhetri's PK, and also the one who got the assist on Chhetri's second goal, though I can't figure out if he was passing to Chhetri or simply mishandling the cross from Udanta. Anyway, later in the game Constantine puts in Jeje, and he comes through with a really nice goal too. Looks like everything went the coach's way today. Here is Constantine's matter-of-fact explanation of the thought process behind sending in Ashique - Stephen Constantine explains the reason for handing Ashique Kuruniyan a start

By the way, the pass from Chhetri to Udanta that led to the kid Anirudh Thapa scoring his first international goal, and the pass from Halicharan to Jeje for the final goal were all top quality stuff. The team seemed to be clicking very well together!
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by prasen9 »

The lack of cricket and cricketing weather is doing us huge favors in the Northeast :-) I was impressed with Udanta's runs.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by jayakris »

The lack of cricket and cricketing weather is doing us huge favors in the Northeast :-) I was impressed with Udanta's runs.
He is tremendous. Probably not great in controlling the midfield but superb with his runs.

By the way, Australia went down to Jordan 0-1 in Group B in a shocker. The same Jordan that we held to 1-1 last month (but for the Gurpreet goof on a goalie goal).

Also, we will move up to #95, it seems. https://twitter.com/FootyRankings/statu ... -asian-cup .. That is close to our highest ranking (#94 in 1996) since the FIFA rankings started.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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prasen9 wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 7:11 pm The lack of cricket and cricketing weather is doing us huge favors in the Northeast :-) I was impressed with Udanta's runs.
Jay, are you still mad at cricket taking all the fields and kids not playing 2000 hours (or whatever the number is) to become a force? Both the games are prospering, hope you’ve made peace with yourself!
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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By the way, it was nice to see India wear white. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any non-test-cricket Indian team play in whites. I’m sure they do but I get to watch very little other sports.

Also, so nice to see the northeast dominate the number of players. Who’s the guy with a pony tail? He seemed to be unnecessarily aggressive and even seemed to have earned Chhetri’s wrath in this highlight package.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by prasen9 »

I think Jay is not mad at cricket but I think his theory is correct. Seeing the demise of the traditional football powers and the rise of the NE, it is sort of clear to me that Punjab, Goa, Kerala, and WB have been affected by cricket. You see that the NE also produces a number of Olympic medals in weightlifting, boxing, etc. Maybe good ones in archery too. Shooting should improve. All that is because the kids are getting divided up into going to other sports than cricket. Whereas, I think in the "mainland" (I know I should not say that), cricket consumes a lot of very athletic kids at the loss of other sports. I like cricket too but this is reality. I wish things were a bit more distributed. Of course, this is my opinion and I do not reside in India. So, take it for whatever it is worth or not.

The ponytail guy seems like a Punjabi defender. Was it Sandesh Jhingan? He is one of the captains. Constatine likes to rotate captaincy between the keeper, Jhingan, Chhetri and a few other players.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by jayakris »

Atithee wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 8:09 pm
prasen9 wrote: Sun Jan 06, 2019 7:11 pm The lack of cricket and cricketing weather is doing us huge favors in the Northeast :-) I was impressed with Udanta's runs.
Jay, are you still mad at cricket taking all the fields and kids not playing 2000 hours (or whatever the number is) to become a force? Both the games are prospering, hope you’ve made peace with yourself!
That is still a big problem, and the number of kids who play 1000 hours of football by age 15 is probably less than that in at least 40-50 countries in the world, despite our huge population. That is why we are only in the 90s in the world. We ought to be in the top-40 and frequently taking part in the world cup and all that, considering the size of the country and the number of warm days available to play football that the country has. It is true that our demise in football (fall from generally world top-75 levels before 1980 or so) pretty much coincided with what happened from 1983 till 2000 when cricket became our religion.

My guess is that the extensive TV coverage of foreign club football over the last 15-20 years have made a lot of kids take up football more seriously. So the pool of kids playing soccer must have gone up by significantly. In fact I have noticed some of the younger ones (guys like Karuniyan for instance) who say that knowing that cricket was not the only sport was a big reason for them to try football.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by Atithee »

Jay, do you think breaking into the national Indian football team is easier than in the cricket team? If so, this could be one reason to consider football over cricket for an aspiring professional sports career.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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Atithee wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2019 2:46 amJay, do you think breaking into the national Indian football team is easier than in the cricket team? If so, this could be one reason to consider football over cricket for an aspiring professional sports career.
Of course. It is so tough to make it into even a state or district cricket team now, I assume. That could be a reason for kids to drop cricket at around age 12 to 15 when they are not making real noise, so there must be a lot more kids now who are moving to football full-time by high school age. Still a lot of precious time is lost for even those kids, because around the world kids only play football during ages 4 though 10 while most Indian kids waste so much time trying to see if they can be good in their first love, cricket.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

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Now, this takes the cake. We complain about our federations firing coaches, but they are never this crazy.

Thailand fires coach Rajevac after Asian Cup loss to India (Seattle Times)

What? It is to India that they lost. Not like losing to some Cook Islands or Pakistan or something. Man, the arrogance of these guys!
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by RohitG »

One more difference in this decade is the rise of leagues. You don't necessarily need to make it to the national side in cricket. One IPL contract is enough to give you decent money. Of course other sports have got their own leagues getting good coverage but they don't have the same financial impact and depth like IPL.

Thailand refused to play Indian in friendly

Arrogance might be the right word here. They had refused to play India in a friendly 8 months back and chosen China instead citing them as a "quality" team. No disagreements about China being better but I am glad that we have shown better quality than the Thais yesterday. Even before the match, their fans, pundits and players had shown overconfidence, taking the 3 points for granted.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by Sin Hombre »

Agree with what Rohit said.

The coverage before the match was how India would lose all 3 matches and why were they even there.
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Re: AFC Asian Cup - 2019 UAE

Post by prasen9 »

The article Rohit pointed to is interesting. Okay, the Thai's call their team War Elephants! An elephant is a pretty bad animal to choose to represent a football team. No wonder the speedy Udanta just brushed them aside. Second, their association is named FAT. It seems they just love fat elephants. Oh well!

Third, the article says that the Indians showed that "they are capable of beating the best on their day". Whoa, nelly! Slow down. This is Thailand we are talking about. We just showed that we can beat perhaps any bottom 100 team on our best day. Some journalists just go gaga at little, I suppose :-)
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