Football: Indian National Team news ...

[nnipp]

Since tall/athletic Indians don't grow on trees like in some other countries, Indian sports authorities need to learn a thing or two from the Chinese olympic association and employ a simple strategy:

For all chinese olympic athletes and b-ball/soccer players entering national academies,which start training around the age of 10, a simple bone-test is performed to predict the height of the young athletes when they reach maturity. This allows Chinese officials to choose which sport and position the kids should focus on in the future. This is the method for which the Chinese gold medal hurdlist was made to train in hurdles at a young age.

If Indian sports academies employed this method, we could ensure that players have a good frame to work with when they reach maturity and weed out puny kids...(i know this sounds very fascist) but can Indian football or other sports get any worse?

[jayakris]

Makes me rather sad to see that article by Stephen constantine (linke above). Quite amazing that he shows no sense of bitterness about how he was removed. I still think it was unnecessary to can Constantine, when the problems were all elsewhere. The man still hopes for Indian football to get somewhere, and it takes a lot for someone to be that way about the country that kicked you out.

Jay

[BSharma]

Indian football needs help from many people and there should be a place for Stephen Constantine in it. He could help India at the junior level.

[amr090]

I dont think he wants a junior position Bhushanji, and anyways Akhmedov is doing a great job there...


Constantine was a great guy whatever his flaws may have been, he definitely proved the idoiocy of the AIFF after they fired him and hired Sukhwinder and Bannerjee, they could not produce even similar results with the same team that he did. I think Indian fans really liked him as he told me he got a ton of emails from them


Anyways lets hope Houghton does a good job, he seems enthusiastic at least. Nnipp's idea of a bone test seems a good idea, perhaps arunava or chris daniel can tell AIFF as they at least seem to be in touch with the AIFF.

[BSharma]

The point is not whether Constantine should be the coach of the Indian junior team or senior team, but that he can be given a role to help Indian football. No single coach, however good he or she may be, can change the fortunes of Indian football without the help of many other people.

[amr090]

I don't know if people have seen the updated PIO database by indianfootball.com but it is very very well done and they have found numerous PIO's.  While it remains to be seen if any of these guys are even close enough to be able to try out for a national or junior national indian team it is excellent work by Chris and Arunava...these guys are singlehandedly helping an entire nation.  Kudos to them...and if they need any help I'd love to help out!

[jorden390]

utter rubbish!

tell me is the japanese national team much taller than us?

i dont think so..same height! in fact we got few player much more taller

hey.....! come to think of it india has played japan every year since 2003

[murlikt]

Jorden, i bet you any money on average the Japanese players are taller than our players. People think they are short but that only shows when they play against European and African teams but otherwise they are taller, stronger, and they are play in the best leagues.

Not all the best players are tall, look at Messi, Rooney, but they have top skill and like with rooney, he is a solid player.

[sajoodk]

Jorden i had been to the India U20 Vs Japan U20 friendly matches and you just can't call Japanese players short. infact indians were no match physically compared to them. there were multiple six footers in the japanese team.

[nnipp1]

Sajoodk, can you tell us how many of the Indian U20 players looked of decent size? How many are over 6 feet? Only Sushil K. Singh?

[sajoodk]

nnipp1 most of the indian players were short. i don't remember about the height of the striker. one of the indian defender was a six footer i guess.  u can check the photos if u wish at photos.yahoo.com/sajoo_dk

[arjun2761]

I think height by itself is overblown.  However, football has a strong physical dimension which includes height, strength (especially lower body), speed, and stamina.  The problem with most Indian players is that they lag behind in all these dimensions in addition to having limited skill (which includes ball control, set piece execution, heading, etc.). 

The Rooneys and Maradonas, while being short, are pretty strong and fast and that allows them to compete based on their super skills.  Even in India, Bhutia, who is very short (I saw him recently and he could not be much more than 5'6" or 5'7") is our best forward. 

In other words, if you are shorter and slower and weaker and lack stamina then there is a huge problem.

[amr090]

arjun-couldnt have said it any better myself

[nnipp1]

Everyone's been using Rooney as an example of a talented short player...but keep in mind that he is 180 cm which i i don't consider short and very hefty to boot...he would instantly be the biggest player on our national team.

Diminutive players don't win football games...look at Tajikistan coming out of nowhere to reach the semi-finals of the AFC U17 Championship (beating South Korea on the way)...from the reports, they are physically imposing compared to other teams...Same with DPR Korea, these countries aren't a hotbed of skill, money or football infrastructure, yet they can put out better teams then India simply by be ing more athletic and using adequately sized players.

[goan_star]

If physical stature is a big factor than how is that we are able to beat Australia, England, West Indies, etc. in Cricket or to that matter in Hockey.