The Indian men’s football team lost to Saudi Arabia 0-2 and crashed out of the Asian Games on Thursday. In their first knockout match at the event in over 13 years, the Blue Tigers shone in patches against a far superior Saudi team but showed the world what they are capable of. Head coach Igor Stimac spoke to RevSportz after the match, and said that he was ‘proud of the team’.
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“If we speak about fight, I’m very proud of the team. Before we came here, I told them very clearly, that if we show fight, we could win games. But in games like this (Saudi Arabia), we need quality which we obviously didn’t have today. Congratulations to them, and we need to be honest with ourselves.”
While the Indian defenders kept things tight in the first half, Saudi’s Khalil Marran scored a brace in the second half, to deny India. Coach Stimac went on to say, “They are a quality side and deserved to win, and there was a huge difference between the two sides. Dheeraj was fantastic on the goal, but we need to feel sorry for ourselves because most of their chances came from our mistakes.” That can be attributed to missing the passes, which was due to skills that were missed in the development of these players.”
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One must be reminded, that until the very end, the chances of this team being sent to the Asian Games were bleak. The clubs were not willing to release the players for the tournament. Even the third-string team which managed to come, didn’t even get a practice session together. MIffed with all this, Stimac said, “I must appreciate all the boys who were with us. For this tournament, it was not easy to get them released from the clubs. I need to thank everyone who helped us in reaching the Asian Games and helping these boys witness such competition.
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“It will be good if they learn something out of here. The big lesson from this tournament is ‘Don’t send us anywhere if we can’t have the best players represent the country’. Don’t send us anywhere if you can’t provide us time to prepare well. We were exposed here representing India but took it well on our shoulders. I think the Indian supporters can be proud of these boys who came unprepared here without playing or having one training session together. We played against a team that has been working together for the last five years,” he concluded.
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