AFC Challenge Cup

[jaydeep]

Really horrible performance ... Now I m having my doubts over our current Dutch coach Wim Koevermans.

[Quantum]

The national team coach isn't the main problem here. We could bring in Jose Mourinho to coach this current squad and the improvement would be marginal at best.

I agree with the others who mentioned it's a talent identification & development issue. This needs to start as early as possible, and needs to be professionally done.

1) I think for now, India needs some sort of nation wide scouting program, since grassroot level scouting is very poor, and inefficient at best.
2) Young kids who should good aptitude and interest need to be professionally developed. This development should not be limited to just basic technical skills, but to the "soft" skills required in the game (like positioning, making runs, playing formations and other "game sense" stuff), physical fitness regimen, and nutritional plan.

As Jay mentioned in an earlier post, most players on our "National Team" don't have basic skills like accurate passing, trapping/receiving the ball or even that simple will to give their best effort which makes players put their bodies on the line to make a last ditch tackle, prevent the ball going out of play or score an opportunistic goal. These technical skills should be "mastered" by all serious footballers by the time they are 18. It's not the national team coach's duty to teach shooting, passing or receiving the ball. Their job is more tactical in nature like playing formations etc. Right now, I think the Barcelona youth team would probably run circles around our national team. The fact that some of our nation's finest talents like Bhutia & Chetrri couldn't break into the first 11 of some third-tier English club and the "B" team of Sporting Lisbon shows how far behind we are.

Also, we need more professional academies across the country. While I admire and respect what TFA and Palian has done for young Indian footballers so far, having just 2 academies with good facilities isn't good enough for a large country like India. India already has a base with the SAI academies around the country. They should try and transform these into world class facilities by trying to rope in private sponsors etc.

3) The Indian Premier league and all top level Indian clubs need to professionalize their product. The league matches are mostly organized at times when no one can come/or are unwilling to the ground and watch the match. This creates a really poor atmosphere at our football matches. Watch most IPL match and you'll notice that the stadiums are not even 25% utilized. The clubs need to do their part too. Poor facilities, inadequate/name-sake youth development programs etc. are just some of the ills that plague our clubs. They are not professionally run, and most don't seem to be interested in doing so either. Then there is also the issue of corruption, where clubs, selectors etc. ask money from local players for a spot on the squad.

[jayakris]

Very good comments Quantum...

Back to the AF Cup qualifier, one more pools out of 5 got done today (in Kyrgyzstan). Kyrgyzstan beat Tajikistan to top the pool, but Tajiksitan's 4-1 goal record with 2 wins, is worse than India's 2 wins and 6-2. So India still has a chance to make it to the next round as one of 2 teams finishing second in their pools. Bangladesh is now assured of a spot based on 6 pts and 6-1 goal record. Over the next 5 days, the last pool gets done. If nobody does better than India, we will make it.

Jay

[jayakris]

The last pool of the qualifiers for AFC Chellenge cup is to start tomorrow in Manila with Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia and Turkmenistan. But I just saw that Brunei has just withdrawn yesterday, on the last day before going to Manila!!

Now, I have no idea how they determine if the second place team in that division is eligible to be one of the 2 best second place teams. If not, India may have already squeezed through to the AFC Challenge cup (in Maldives later with these 5 pool winners, 2 best second-place teams, and the hosts)????

Jay

[jayakris]

This SUCKS. As per the AFC challenge cup qualifier wiki, they have just awarded an automatic one win and a 3-0 goal margin to all three teams in pool E, like they all beat Brunei by 3-0 scores. So we wait to see if the pool E second place team ends up with a better than a 6-2 record in goals, to know our fate. Hoping for hosts Philippines to beat the other two teams each by 7-0 margins and put this thing out of reach for them ..

But I suppose what will happen is that Turkmenistan and Philippines will each beat Cambodia, and they will both play for a tie and advance with 7 pts in the final match... I am sure they will do that. IT SUCKS!

Jay

[Atithee]

C'mon Jay. We suck as a football nation. That's all that there is to it. Others manipulating matches to their advantage is nothing new.

[jayakris]

Agree of course.

Meanwhile, Turkmenistan beat Cambodia 7-0 and now have a 10-0 goal advantage and 6 points. I don't think Philippines will do significantly worse against Cambodia day after tomorrow and lose to Turkmenistan badly enough to miss the second spot to us...

[jayakris]

Philippines beat Cambodia 8-0 today. Now we need Philippines to beat Turkmenistan by a 5 goal margin. Ain't gonna happen. They both will advance. Jay

[jaydeep]

Good, so our nightmare of following is over ...

India's AFC Challenge Cup hopes dashed with Philippines win

[jayakris]

Yep. That nightmare is over. Philippines beat Tkm 1-0, and so Bangladesh and Turkmenistan made it as the best 2 second place teams on goal margin. We had to either score ONE goal against Myanmar, or 2 more against Guam to displace Bangladesh. Now, we are worse than even the subcontinental teams, officially! Very well-deserved honor, and not at all because our ranking is misleading or anything. We simply suck, and WILL continue to suck till we recognize why we have zero talent coming up in our country.

Other than doing some sort of Chinese style scouting of 8 to 10 year olds, and putting at least 200 of them every year in special soccer&academics programs, we will never come up in football. By themselves, enough kids won't play (and hardly have opportunities to play) enough soccer and develop the skills and feel needed for football by age 14 in India anyway.

If we focus on a few pockets in India, it's relatively easy to scout enough talented 8-10 year olds though. Our high population density can be used to our advantage if we think carefully. But will we ever do that? Waiting to scout 14 year olds won't work (even if we had a great system for that, which we don't anyway), because by themselves the ones with the right genes would not have played enough and emerged in India. Ages 10 through 15 are crucial. Put in a 15-year program now, if we care for football.

But I don't think people recognize the magnitude of the problem that I keep bringing up, to do something drastically different.

Jay

[Prashant]

If we focus on a few pockets in India, it's relatively easy to scout enough talented 8-10 year olds though. Our high population density can be used to our advantage if we think carefully.

Exactly. Pick no more than 3-4 locations, have a strong development program starting as young as possible. Maybe find one sponsor for each location. Provide everything these kids need - including schooling, otherwise it will never last in India. Pick as large a pool as possible. That should produce some real players in 10 years.

Also, once they are old enough, if they can't make an international club team, aggressively push them to play college soccer in the US (if you think this is a bad idea, I refer you to New Zealand, which basically used Stanford's soccer team as their development program a decade ago & went to the World Cup with those players).

[prasen9]

Not everybody likes to play cricket in India or are not as good at it. I never had hand-eye co-ordination or shoulder strength to bowl. I loved playing football. Given the population density, there is bound to be enough kids who can be scoured in say Bengal, Kerala, Goa, and Punjab. Add in Delhi, Mumbai, and the northeast. But, there has to be some program that systematically tries to identify talent in numbers and nurtures them.

[Atithee]

Jay, since we are now officially worse than all subcontinental teams, could you comment (and test at the same time) on your root cause for our malaise in football? Is Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka less impacted by cricket? From what I know, while football is probably a craze in Bangladesh, cricket is at the same level as it is in India. Nepal could likely be skewed toward football, but I don't think Sri Lanka and Pakistan are. But, none of these may be ranked above India in football (I am too lazy to check and just going by your generic statement).

On Prashant's point - It is my long standing solution. There is no better way to get free education/coaching for Indians than to join US universities in their respective sports. In some ways I find that American schools are far too generous in spending resources on talents that will likely never benefit the US, at least directly.

[jayakris]

Atithee, I was basically joking that India worse than the subcontinental neighbors. Officially Bangladesh may be ranked ahead of us but we would generally beat them more often than not. Together, these countries (India, Pakistan, SriLanka, Bhutan and Nepal) form the worst football countries in the world - among countries with more than 25 or so million population, I suppose. India will still come up ahead of all of them and would beat them 4 out of 5 times easily - except perhaps that piddly little cricket-less country, Maldives, who would probably beat us a little more often and would very frequently beat the other much-larger subcontinental countries (don't you wonder why they do?). It is not just an India-problem. It's the same deal all over the subcontinent.

prasen - yes, there are kids who play football, but unless they do a lot of it during ages 8 through 14, you will never find out who might have had talent WITH the 'feel" and acquired instincts for football. If we can scout kids at ages 8 through 10, we can get somewhere. But that is not easy scouting. It needs very careful scientific schemes (which is why mentioned the Chinese system). That takes analyzing very specific items in the athleticism and mental abilities of young kids. Not easy. Just going and walking around football fields in Kerala, Goa and Bengal would not help much either, because you would probably be seeing 12-16 year old kids already who haven't played enough hours. Even if some of them show some occasional abilities and even dazzle you with some skills, that is not sufficient all-around "feel" for football. At ages 12-16, it is already too late for them to become true footballers who have lived with the ball and nothing but the ball.

The number of hours played by age 12 or 14 is really the key problem, as I have said time and again. Not necessarily playing in an organized way; even the back-ally kicking around counts, but that too doesn't happen in India to anywhere near the extent it does around the world. Not that the kids don't like the game (they do), or whether they are playing cricket (most may have found that they are not good at it anyway). If they can't find a couple of other 9 yr old kids to kick some ball around somewhere nearby, they end up doing nothing, and football-playing becomes much more infrequent than in other parts of the world.

Jay

[Prashant]

For what its worth, India [143] is ahead of:

-Bangladesh [157]
-Maldives [161]
-Pakistan [171]
-Sri Lanka [173]
-Nepal [175]

We are however just behind Afghanistan [141].

All of this is neither here nor there - I doubt any of those nations feel any more optimistic about their prospects.