FOOTBALL

India plays its second consecutive Asian Cup, but this time they wake up the expectations of fans by showing their strength in first AFC Asian Cup 2024 match. Even they lost the match with 2-0, but their game play describes a different story this time.

Raikot, Ludhiana:- The sleeping Giant of football is India. So many years we have coated India with this banner. The population of India is near about 1.4 billion but can’t give the best players in football. The question is that why India underrepresented in international football? There is only one sport-cricket, that’s why the country lags behind in football and every time struggling for qualifying in FIFA World Cup.

Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA optimistically anounced inthe year 2012 that India is the sleeping giant of football. The rank of India in international football is 102 and not even among the top 10 sides in Asia. India is still struggling to emerge from its slumber.

On the other hand Stephen Constantine, the former head coach of Indian men’s football team said to media house that India is nat a sleeping Giant in football. Indian football basked in glory in the year 1950 and 1960, win the gold in 1951 and 1962 Asian games and clinching a 4th place in 1956 Summer Olympics.

Indian football team every time showed big dreams as in 1984, 2011, and 2019 but the bubble of illusion never survives longer. During the last campaign in the year 2019, the team raised the fans expectations with 4-1 win over Thailand in the opening game, but losses against the UAE and Bahrain meant India missed qualifying for the next level once again and broke the hearts of football fans.

Coach Igor Stimac,The team India football men’s coach, under his cover, India faces a tricky campaign at the AFC Asian Cup 2024, where the team India grouped with teams with fine rank than India like Australia, Syria and Uzbekistan. Igor Stimac fearless approach attracted the fans but the coach clashed in controversy in November 2023 when he said that The Asian Cup is not an Important tournament. It created a big noise in media. Constantine , who is the coach of Indian team in 2002-2005 and then 2015-2019 was surpridsed at Igor Stimac’s reaction about Asian Cup and he said that this tournament is the biggest one that India is going to play.

The Sleeping Giant Looses by 2-0 against Australia

In this tournament, India is equipped with a great 26 members squad with highest goal scorer Sunil Chhetri, and include same potency of players the Igot stimac was worked with since taking over this charge. All players play India Super League (ISL) , the country’s top League. Indian football coach Pradhyum Reddy already declared that the road to results in Asian Cup is not so easy. He also added that Australia are seasoned opponents who have got their core group playing in Europe.

But the fearless coach Stimac worried nothing, and this time India plays on the front foot. So In the first battle, Indian players tried to press Australia and made life difficult for them. In the whole play, Indian players create problems for Australians. Reddy’s declarations about match was not find any fun in match gone wrong and Indian players showed their full strength.

The former player Darren Caldeira said ,” Its our best chance to improve scoring against Syria, 91st ranked and then Uzbekistan, 68th ranked. No one is talking about Uzbekistan but I personally think that they are rising powerhouse in centra Asia. Abdukodir Khusanov, a 19-year-old Uzbek de3fender plays for Ligue1 club lens in France.

Bad Luck for India in first match.

Recently India won three tournaments in 2023, including SAFF Championship in July which have 8 teams from south Asia. But most of the time Indian football team played against the team with lower rank to them. So how we expect our players shined up against weaker ranked opponents. We need to play more game with high ranked teams.

Asian Cup: Australia 2-0 India, Group B – as it happened | Australia | The Guardian

In the lead-up to the Asian Cup, India won three tournaments in 2023, including the SAFF Championship in July, which featured eight teams from South Asia.

If we left Kyrgyzstan, all opponent teams that India faced across the three tournaments are ranked below it. The major concern is that highlights India’s tendency to play against weaker-ranked opponents.

No doubt, Indian team improved significantly in the last decade, but comparatively not good as other core group teams done like Thailand, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. We must learn from them. Japan and South Corea also did their best. So that our former coach Constantine blamed India’s slow progress on a lack of player development. He also told,” When i joined indian team as coach in 2002, i realised that there in no lack of talent but we aren’t looking for it in the right places. And when we did, we aren’t developing them. This is why India has not gone to the highest we imagined”.