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Yes, pleasing to win this kind of tournament after so long.

Not sure why the umpire and China contested our winning goal. Only thing I can think of is dangerous play, but as it was a shot on goal, that was not an issue. Didn't see any obstruction at the top of the D and no foul after the initial save.

There was a funny scene at the end of the match when our ladies tried to lift the coach and couldn't do it!! He is double their size and probably weighs 2-3 times as much as our heaviest player.

The pleasing aspect of today's match was that we made a small tactical adjustment, which made a key difference: at least 3 of our defenders always hung back, in order to thwart the quick Chinese counter attacks, and as a result the Chinese never really had too Many chances at goal. We were definitely the dominant side in the final, with only the third quarter being an evenly-matched phase of the match.
I don't think Deepa had a credible shot at goal before the final brilliance, but there were at least 3 brilliant long passes in the 4th quarter that created opportunities for our forwards -- one of which came close to a goal, but was shot wide (possibly by Deepa). Our forwards were swarming all over the Chinese D in the last 5 minutes, and the final PC was inevitable. The goal was brilliant of course, but it was the culmination of superb attacking teamwork at the end of the match.
The Chinese team was described as a "developmental" team, but not a purely under-21 team. Still required our 12th ranked team to play superbly to lift the trophy with a come-from-behind (yesterday) win today against the world #8 side and lift the trophy. The partisan crowd, almost wholly pro-India and very passionate, surely helped!!

Our women's team is currently playing in Asian Champions trophy in Donghae City, South Korea .

5 top Asian teams- China,Korea,India,Japan and Malaysia are participating.

We started well with a dominant 4-1 win over Japan. In other matches, both China and South Korea beat Malaysia 3-1 and South Korea and Japan drew their match 1-1.

We play China in a key match tomorrow.

Another very good performance by us to beat China 3-1. Good to get confident wins over Japan and China to start with. Now, we are the top of the standings with 6 points from 2 games, Korea at 4 and China at 3. We play Malaysia tomorrow.

The tournament is being streamed live on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsAxUdF ... e=youtu.be
Really excellent quality stream.

Nice wins against Japan and China. We look ok in this competition because the opposition is similar (or weaker in Malaysia's case) physically to us. We have rested 2-3 of our regulars.

We gave away too many PCs in both matches, but were good otherwise.

We beat Malaysia 3-2 today, but it was a very 'Indian' performance'! By this I mean we did all of these in large quantities: miss really clear cut chances, mess up PC routines, concede needlessly, tackled like amateurs and got cards.

This was game we should have won by 4-5 goals at least. Malaysia had 4-5 attacks and got either a PC or a goal from each of these. We were poor with our last pass or just missed open goals. Our tackling was awful. Needlessly lunging in and conceding a free hit or worse. We are carrying 2-3 weak players, but I'm impressed with Navneet Kaur, Neha Goyal and Suman Devi.

Our play seemed reasonably structured, but this was because of little or no press from the opposition at this tournament. Not too convinced about the coach's attacking plans. Seems like an aimless whack into the D is his only plan. Just as the men approached their games in the Azlan Shah Cup & CWG. I accept Malaysia had packed their defence and so the circle was congested. However, most of the crash balls are going to be intercepted, so switching the ball from flank to flank to open up space is the better alternative.

We are currently playing the final against Korea. Live stream here -

India vs. Korea

We are trailing 0-1 at half time. Korea is looking the better team here and could have easily gone up by higher margin but for some luck for us.

We ended up losing 0-1. It looks close but in reality Korea looked a much better team. We simply did not have a good attacking plan and could not penetrate Korean defense.

Good to see our women's team maintaining a reasonable standard. I watched the last two matches of the previous edition of this trophy (in Singapore), so am pleased that we beat China with greater ease this time, and only narrowly lost the final to the host team.

Korea were the better team in both matches.

I feel we have gone backwards a bit. Our attacking play is not good enough to beat the better teams. We seem too eager to just whack the ball into the circle from any point in the opposition half. Marijne seems unable to use any other plans. Our tackling is the other sore point. We tackle so badly that cards are inevitable. All Indian teams do this. No composure but over excited lunges...a bit like children trying to grab a sweet!! 3-4 of our players are just too weak.

The WC will see us thrashed if we don't more discipline and cut out the silly errors that we are expert at!

Our team for Asian champions trophy in Muscat,Oman next month-

Goalkeepers: PR Sreejesh, Krishan Bahadur Pathak
Defenders: Harmanpreet Singh, Gurinder Singh, Varun Kumar, Kothajit Singh Khadangbam, Surender Kumar, Jarmanpreet Singh, Hardik Singh
Midfielders: Manpreet Singh (Captain), Sumit, Nilakanta Sharma, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Chinglensana Singh Kangujam (Vice Captain)
Forwards: Akashdeep Singh, Gurjant Singh, Mandeep Singh, Dilpreet Singh.

Few changes from the Asian games team. It seems Sunil is rested and Rupinder Pal Singh dropped.

Vivek is playing in the Youth Olympics, Rupinder Pal is still not fully fit. Nor is Ramandeep andof course, Sardar has retired.

However, the real problem area is the forward line. We still have Mandeep and Akashdeep rather than trying out Sumit (who looked good at the Azlan Shah Cup) or Affan Yousseff, who has been banished along with several others. The 2 favourites remain to mess up things in almost every match year after year!

Good start for us at Asian championships trophy in Oman.

11-0 win against Oman to start with and a good 3-1 win against Pakistan yesterday.

We will play surprise Asiad gold medalists Japan today. They beat Korea yesterday.

9-0 win over Japan yesterday. Very impressive play in all matches so far, but we don't want a repeat of the recent Asian Games where we messed up in the semi v. Malaysia. There's usually a really horrible performance in every tournament .

Live matches and replays are on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsRwcl ... iy2O3eL6hg

I have complained about the inclusion of Akashdeep and Mandeep for the past 4+ years. Well, Akashdeep has been one of our best players here. Creating chances, eliminating defenders, passing accurately and running back. He has cut down drastically on mis traps and sloppy passes. Mandeep too, has been way better than usual (although still not as good as our other options). It makes a huge difference if 2 of our forwards are not losing the ball every single time! Can these 2 maintain this level against the stronger European/Aussie teams?

Pakistan are copying our behaviour from the past. They have reverted to appointing past players as coaches (after Oltmans' departure) and after losing to us, 'senior' coach Mohammed Saqlain has walked out following an argument with manager Hassan Sardar!

ssp wrote: ↑Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:06 amWell, Akashdeep has been one of our best players here. Creating chances, eliminating defenders, passing accurately and running back. He has cut down drastically on mis traps and sloppy passes. Mandeep too, has been way better than usual (although still not as good as our other options).

What do you think has caused this sudden improvement in these two, after so many years when you had pointed out their flaws? I mean, trapping and passing are such basic skills that I thought it was too late for these guys to improve on those.