Football: Indian National Team news ...

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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jaydeep »

On the positive note, a Croatian Igor Stimac is appointed as the head coach of the men's national team on a 2 yrs. contract ... Stimac having a strong resume as a coach and as a player.

As a coach, Sitmac's major achievement was guiding Croatia to qualify for the FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 ... As a player, he was part of the Croatia squad which finished 3rd in the FIFA World Cup France 1998 ... He was also a part of the Yugoslavia u-19 national team which won the FIFA u-20 World Cup in Chile 1987.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

Definitely has a good resume. Hope our players like him and will play to his plan!
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by Sin Hombre »

China is now allowing foreign players in their NT, as long as they have Chinese ancestry.

We need to do the same if we want the sport to have a chance.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by arjun2761 »

Looks like India lost 1-3 to Curacao in the Kings Cup in Thailand.

While Curacao has some decent players playing in the better Netherlands and UK leagues, it is a country of 161,000 people! Note that they have a relative high GDP per capita.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

And Curacao is #81 in FIFA rankings, compared to #101 for India. Expected loss, but the way our defense cracked and allowed quick counter goals was bad. They scored in the 16th miniute, and then scored again in the 18th minute. Chhetri scored a PK in the 31st minute, and again we allowed the third goal within 3 minute in the 34th minute. After that everybody settled down.

Not a great start with Igor Stimac as our head coach....
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by arjun2761 »

Two of the Curacao goals were scored by players who play in the top Dutch league (Eredivisie) and in the second tier English league (Championship), so they are probably better quality than any of the Indian players. Ultimately, for team India to be competitive in the top 100, they will need some players to play in the better leagues outside India or else recruit some of the NRI's who play there (although I'm not sure if there are that many that do).
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

India leads Thailand 1-0 at the half-time (Goal by Anirudh Thapa in the 17th minute). Looks like the coaches of both sides have rested a lot of seniors and put in new faces.

75th minute. Still 1-0 India.

90+1 ... Still 1-0. Just hold on, guys.... And they do. We win 1-0. So we finish third in the 4-team event, and Thailand finishes 4th.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by Sin Hombre »

Nice.

Hope that the Thais have a meltdown again.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

After the King's Cup, we apparently moved up 1 spot in the FIFA rankings (as of now) to #100. We lost 4.27 points from our total to fall to 1214.65 points after the loss to #82 Curacao, but gained 4.57 to go to 1219.22 for beating #114 Thailand. So, at least we justified our ranking there and came out okay. The Cup went to Curacao, as #97 Vietnam lost in a penalty shoot-out.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

The second edition of the Intercontinental Cup will be held at the state-of-the-art stadium "TransStadia" in Ahmedabad from July 7 to 18th. The teams are #83 Syria, #120 Tajikistan, #121 North Korea, and #101 India (but I believe FIFA will release new rankings this week?).

An interesting story today was that Coach Stimac has asked Anas Edathodika to come out of retirement, and added him to the 35 member squad. That is great news. The dude unnecessarily retired in a shocking move this January (probably out of frustration with the way we screwed it up in the last minutes of the third match at the AFC cup). Anas has apparently not yet said yes, but is considering it. Damn, that is good news! We really need him at the back, as the 3 goal loss against Curacao showed. It has been a while since anybody scored 3 on us. Anas just turned 32 and has some more playing time in him.

The intercontinental cup may be our last event before the AFC Cup and World up qualification rounds start in September.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jaydeep »

A bad start in the Intercontinental Cup 2019 ... We lost 2-4 to the Tajikistan team after leading 2-0 at the half-time ... :damn:
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

jaydeep wrote: Sun Jul 07, 2019 4:50 pm A bad start in the Intercontinental Cup 2019 ... We lost 2-4 to the Tajikistan team after leading 2-0 at the half-time ... :damn:
To complete the rest of the scores from the intercontinental cup in July, we lost 2-4 to #119 Tajikistan, lost 2-5 to #118 N.Korea, and then drew 1-1 with #87 Syria 1-1
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

The FIFA 2022 qualification starts this week for us (it is also a joint qualification for Asian Cup 2023). We face #87 Oman in Group E, at Guwahati on this Thursday (Sep 5). Then we will go to Doha to play Asian champions #62 Qatar next week (Sep 10). Afghanistan and Bangladesh are also in our group, and they all play home and home.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

India leads Oman 1-0 in the 26th minute on a Chhetri (who else?) goal... That is his 72nd goal for India! Wow. What a legend.

Half time. We still lead 1-0. A stunning save from Gurpreet at the 43rd min mark.

Pretty good crowd there at beautiful Guwahati for this.
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Re: Football: Indian National Team news ...

Post by jayakris »

60th min. Still 1-0. Good defending by us and occasional counters. Gurpreet was solid on a couple of saves too.

75th min. 1-0. Oman is often in our half of the field now, but we are defending well. Need a bit more of ball possession by us though.

84th min. They evened it at 1-1 at the 82nd minute (goal by Al Alawi Al Mandhar). Then we had a chance and Manveer missed by inches.

89 min. Crap. Disaster. 1-2, as Al Alawi scores again. The same old same old. Indian football has tuned into Indian hockey now. I don't know about this coach. Once again, we shouldn't have let Constantine go. This guy has unnecessarily changed things around and now we cannot seem to defend when it counts. Yikes.
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