If India doesn't qualify, it will be clear a lot of money is being laundered through this useless kangarooing of a small batch of players. What tough group? They will find it tough against Vietnam, Thailand too. Whom do you expect to play? Bhutan?
Japan, N.Korea, India & Uzbekistan would have been much tougher for us..
But if we fear to play Japan, S.Korea, N.Korea , Australia & Uzbekistan in U-16 level., we can't move further. Also there is no purpose to play in U-17 World Cup even if we qualify with easier group.
Hope AIFF arrange few friendlies with Group A / Group B teams in August.
At U-16 level, results are not consistent with senior national team performances. Anything can happen. India can do well as we look at encouraging performances in Qualifying Round.
We finally have 2 strikers who can score all kinds of goals..Sridhart and Himanshu..our midfielders have scored a few as well..Bibiano did well to learn from previous batch's shortcomings
Thats a tough group - Australia and S. Korea in particular will be difficult to beat. But we must recognise that India is showing consistent progress at u16 level - this is our 3rd consecutive qualification for AFC u16 championship. That shows our youth teams are performing at a competitive level at this age group (they get worse later on). Also we drew against Uzbekistan last year so there is hope. Finally when India played S. Korea in 2018 championship in Malaysia, the main reason they dominated us was because of our ultra defensive tactics which ensured that we never even tried to attack them and our creative players never got the license to express themselves on the ball...it was all 11 men behind the ball parking the bus! This time Bibiano has taught his team to play with more aggression. Hopefully this change in attitude helps them in surprising other teams.
Comments
Japan, N.Korea, India & Uzbekistan would have been much tougher for us..
But if we fear to play Japan, S.Korea, N.Korea , Australia & Uzbekistan in U-16 level., we can't move further.
Also there is no purpose to play in U-17 World Cup even if we qualify with easier group.
Hope AIFF arrange few friendlies with Group A / Group B teams in August.