The Sports-India Community

India must beat Singapore home and away, and beat both Oman and Japan at home. If it can pull that off, then it will be in serious contention from the group. We need to ensure that Bhaichung is fit and able to play the key games...

Singapore has been in the process of importing players to their national teams recently. I read a few reports about Singapore getting chinese and other country players to improve their badminton team and that it is trying to get football players also. PKB, can you shed some light on this subject?

Singapore has imported quite a few top-notch badminton players from Indonesia and table-tennis players from China. These have helped propel Singapore to higher rankings in these sports.
With football, Singapore's goal is to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, so they are planning long-term by importing players from places like Croatia. So far, this has not significantly improved the national team's performances, and quality players have not stayed loyal to the Singapore colours long enough to make a difference. This could change, but India should still be able to edge past Singapore in next year's WC qualifiers!

Although this news has nothing to do with Indian football or the World Cup but Brazil failed to qualify for this year's Olympic Games in Athens after a shock 1-0 defeat to Paraguay.

Brazil fail to qualify for Olympic Games

The Indian team was announced for the match against Singapore on February 18.

Goalkeepers: Sangram Mukherjee, Naseem Akhtar.

Defenders: Debjit Ghosh, Deepak Mondal, Mahesh Gawali, M. Suresh and Satish Kumar Bharti.

Midfielders: Samir Naik, Climax Lawrence, Renedy Singh, Jo Paul Ancheri, Alvito D'Cunha, Tomba Singh, S. Venkatesh and Jatin Singh Bisht.

Forwards: Baichung Bhutia, Aushim Biswas and Abhishek Yadav.

Best of luck to the Indian team.

hey where's Khalid Jamil ? i think he was instrumental in the last wc qualifiers 'semi success' . and Ebbie had to fall out ultimately . So standard of Indian football is higher than N H Phantoms ?

BSHARMA, u missed out rookie Sk Sanjib's name ! Its out in the papers today !

Well a few more days tillt he big clash, I can't believe even as of now no one has even picked up the national broadcast of the clash. This borders on the ridiculous, a World Cup qualie, and no one cares enough to broadcast it?? Let's hope for the best from India I hope they will be ready. It seems to me that Singapore is an offensive side, and in order to win we will need to score a few goals.

amr090 don't be disappointed . AIR (all india radio) will broadcast live commentary from 15.55 h .

i think DD Sports will surely telecast the match at least deffered live,if not live

is it possible to get the radio station on the net?? the one with the live commentary.

yeah im not sure if they are or i would def. listen to it in the US

How can a world cup qualifying match not be televised live when it is being played on its own soil. I didn't know that football is this unpopular in India.

Actually it is the second most popular sport after cricket. Played a lot as well in schools and the like. It's just that TV coverage of football is pretty bad as the national body is having trouble signing up sponsors etc . I would guess their marketing department is not as up to speed as some of the other sports such as golf, tennis etc.

! India wins!!!! I dont know exactly how they scored but that is awesome. Let's hope we can keep this going. No one expects us to do anything and the pressure is all on the other countries in the group, so we should go for broke!!