The reason, why I am here is because many of our u-23 ,u-20 players are playing.These players are the future of our national team because age group teams feed the players for the senior team.Therefore,it is important for me to see and evaluate how these players are performing, irrespective of which International match / Tournament they are playing whether they are playing Saff Tournament or any other Tournament for that matter.
They are currently playing Saff,so i am talking about Saff.When they'll play in Afc qualification Tournament,then I'll talk about Afc qualification tournament.I don't know what's positive or negative in this tournament.
We are talking as if our calendar is lined up with International Friendlies. We hardly play any of them. Whatever international matches we have played is due to ultra long qualification process of World Cup and Asian Cup qualification. There also we got advantage of low ranking and playoffs which gave us extra matches with Nepal, Laos. Due to ISL and lethargy of AIFF, we hardly play in International Friendlies.
We should not disparage about SAFF Cup, they are regular opportunities for our national team.
List of Friendlies other then SAFF, WCQ since 2014
2014
India vs Bangladesh
India vs Palestine
2015
India vs Nepal
2016
Bhutan vs India
India vs Puerto Rico
2017
Cambodia vs India
India vs Nepal
Then this tri-nation
vs Mauritius & St. Kitts
2018
mumbai tournament
vs Chinese Taipei
vs New Zealand
vs Kenya
Most of the above teams are SAFF type teams only.
Whatever serious matches we have played is due to Qualifiers, SAFF. Now there are no more of them in 2018, 2019 so we should take best use of every opportunity we get.
Comments
The reason, why I am here is because many of our u-23 ,u-20 players are playing.These players are the future of our national team because age group teams feed the players for the senior team.Therefore,it is important for me to see and evaluate how these players are performing, irrespective of which International match / Tournament they are playing whether they are playing Saff Tournament or any other Tournament for that matter.
They are currently playing Saff,so i am talking about Saff.When they'll play in Afc qualification Tournament,then I'll talk about Afc qualification tournament.I don't know what's positive or negative in this tournament.
Atleast with Afghanistan present it was interesting
We should have sent arrows to SAFF and played a few friendlies this international break
The only way to improvement is more exposure by way of playing friendlies during Intnl. breaks.
The intent is what matters, which AIFF certainly lacks.