AFC Challenge Cup

[jayakris]

I knew that we were in trouble, the moment I saw Jeje was injured. We stand no chance unless Jeje and Sunil are both there (or in the past when Bhutia and Sunil were both healthy). Jay

[jayakris]

India lost to Philippines 0-2. We are out of the tornament. We are just unbelieveably bad right now in football. I don't know why I even bother about Indian football. We just have gone from bad to worse pretty much consistently. I don't think we have been this bad, EVER, though, as we are now. Jay

[depleter]

This really takes my interest off football

[jaydeep]

So poor results continue ... Need to change coach Savio Medeira ASAP.

[jayakris]

India lost to DPR Korea 0-4 today in the third group match. Philippines beat Tajikistan 2-1 and made the semi behind North Korea. Turkmenistan and Palestine made the semi from the other group.

That finishes an 0-8 run by India in this tournament. Savio hopefully will be fired immediately. I would be happy to see even Aramndo Colaco back as the coach.

Jay

[jaydeep]

So with that horrible outing ended ... Hoping also end of the term for Savio Medeira.

[jaydeep]

Team is announced for the AFC Challenge Cup 2014 (Qualifiers) which kicks-off in Yangon on March 2, 2013 ... India have been clubbed with hosts Myanmar, Chinese Taipei and Guam in Group ‘A’ ... We will play Chinese Taipei in the first match on 2nd March.

Goalkeepers - Subrata Paul (Prayag United), Sandip Nandy (Churchill Brothers), Karanjit Singh (Salgaocar SC)
Defenders - Nirmal Chhetri, Syed Rahim Nabi (both from Mohun Bagan), Denzil Franco (Churchill Brothers), Gouramangi Singh (Prayag United), Rowilson Rodrigues (Dempo SC), Shouvik Ghosh (Pailan Arrows), Raju Gaikwad (East Bengal), Gurjinder Singh (Pune FC)
Midfielders - Lenny Rodrigues (Churchill Brothers), Lalkamal Bhowmick, CK Vineet (both from Prayag United), Arata Izumi (Pune FC), Mehtab Hossain (East Bengal), Francisco Fernandes (Salgaocar SC), Alwyn George (Pailan Arrows), Jewel Raja Shaikh (Mohun Bagan), Clifford Miranda (Dempo SC)
Forwards - Sunil Chhetri (Churchill Brothers) Robin Singh (East Bengal), Jeje Lalpekhlua (Pune FC)

Coach - Wim Koevermans

[jaydeep]

At half-time Indian team is leading by solitary goal from Raja in 40th minute ... Taipei equalized in 58th minute.

At AFC Challenge Cup qualifiers 2014, Yangon, Myanmar

Group A
India vs Chinese Taipei 1-1 (1-0)
Goal Scored - Jewel Raja (IND) 40' and ? (TPE) 58'

[jayakris]

Robin Singh header in injury time (min 91) gave us a 2-1 win over Taiwan. Phew! ... It would have been disaster not to pick up 3 pts against Taiwan who are the only non subcontinental Asian team that we rather regularly beat. Now we have Guam and hosts Myanmar to deal with. With the way we have struggled lately, I am not sure we will beat either team.

Jay

[jayakris]

For the sake of those who may not have followed the AFC cup, the AFC challenge cup and the AFC challenge cup qualifiers format, here is my quote from sometime back in the Indian football general thread about the AFC challenge cup qualifiers going on in Myanmar.

This is to qualify into the 8-team AFC challenge cup in Maldives in 2014, which itself is the qualifier for the AFC cup in Australia in 2015. At the AFC challenge cup qualifiers, we are in a pool of 4 teams along with the hosts Myanmar. So we are scheduled to play #169 Taiwan, #181 Guam and #162 Myanmar on March 2nd, 4th and 6th. The winners of 5 such 4-team pools and the two best runners up will join the hosts Maldives in 2014 for the AFC challenge cup

So, this the first of two tiers that one has to go through to make it into the AFC cup.

Jay

[arjun2761]

Clearly, we are underranked or anything.

[jayakris]

Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but our ranking is about as legitimate as it can get. Actually, we may be worse than our ranking of 167 out of 207 countries right now. We will probably lose more than we will win against all but about 20 or so countries among the 207 that are ranked by FIFA. It is not even coaching or talent-scouting or anything. We simply don't have players. At least that is all I can surmise based on my observations for quite a few years of what has been going on in Indian football. There is just nothing left there.

Hope I am terribly wrong... but I have been hoping for that for ever, and all we see is our struggles getting worse and worse againnst against the Palestines and Afghanistans out there. When I am so unsure if we would win against #183 Guam next, you know how bad it is.

Jay

[arjun2761]

Just to be clear, I was being facetious! I might have omitted a word in my message which should have said that we are not underranked.

Don't agree with the rest of your message on soccer in India which seems to state that number of serious players prevents us from rising further in the world rankings. We have more than sufficient numbers and interest in soccer that we should be a lot better than we are -- it is largely a problem of development of talent problem. Our juniors tend to do much better than our seniors which clearly points in that direction (i.e., numbers and undevelopment talent is not per se the reason for our abysmal ranking).

Other than that, soccer is a worldwide sport which is very competitive so that is definitely one of the reasons for our low rankings. Also, soccer is primarily an athletic sport and we've always struggled more in developing talent in the athletic sports than in the skill sports (Billiards and chess are examples of where we do well in the non-athletic sports). Even if your premise that Cricket is attracting all our talent, we can see that our athletic skills even in cricket are pretty average (fast bowling and fielding rather than batting and spin bowling), so the numbers per se are not primary reason why we are as low as we are. Of course, if we were to become a top-20 country or something like that the numbers may become a barrier but our numbers are more than sufficient that a strong development program should get us to being much better than where we are.

[PKBasu]

Thankfully, at least #167-ranked India were able to beat #169 Taiwan, even if by a narrow 2-1 margin with an injury-time goal!

[jayakris]

Even if your premise that Cricket is attracting all our talent.

That has not been really my premise. My premise is that the playing space encroachment by another sport is a serious problem. Other sports attracting top talent away from soccer by age 10 and 12 happens in many many countries. So, having cricket rather than American football or basketball or baseball as the sport that attract kids much more than soccer after age 10-12, is not unique to India. It just happens to be cricket in India, and that by itself is not a problem. In fact I like our kids being different than in other places and getting passionate about a sport purely for how interesting that sport (cricket) is.

But playing space is a very limited commodity, and nowhere else in the world is football-playing space being encroached by another sport - any other sport, and to any significant extent. Interest by kids in other sports happen all over the world, but even in those places u12 kids spend so much more hours playing football than any other sport (including even in the USA where football is like the 5th best sport in terms of kids' passion). Nowhere else do kids play this little football and thus develop this less of skills, than in the Indian subcontinent. The reason is that they can't find enough others with whom to kick a ball around in some space nearby - and that is the easiest fun thing for little boys to do anywhere else. Because their playing space is totally used up (to almost 80-90%) by another sport in India. The back street and gulleys out there are also for little kids to kick a ball around, elsewhere in the world. because they really don't have another sport than can really be played in such spaces. But not so for us. To me, that is unique to the subcontinent.

Till a proper study is done into the number of hours played by kids in football by age 12 or 14, we won't start finding the proper answers to our football problems. But first we need to be aware of the playing-space encroachment issue.

I would even surmise that if we could magically open up as much of space as was used for football back in the early 70s as "prohibited for cricket", I will guarantee that in 10 years we will have football talent enough to go to around top-100 or top-75 in the world in football.

I totally disagree that our athletic inadequacies explain being 165th in the world. The genetic/physical inadequacies you mention are well-known, and nobody disputes that. And, being 25th through 100th in world while having the second most population could be explained by such inadequacies, as well was other facilities/ coaching/ scouting deficiencies. And, that is the range where we are, in all other sports, by any measure.

The reason why we are this amazingly below the normal 25-100 range in football, is something else. The real reason is that there are are only very very few kids in India who have 1000+ hrs of football playing experience by age 14. VERY few. To me, the issue of playing space encroachment by another sport, is the only unique aspect about football in India in comparison to other sports in India (where also we are bad, but never below top-75 or 100).

The same old rehashed topic from me, of course

Jay