Sudeep Pakrashi:
The All India Football Federation (AIFF), buoyed by the senior national women’s team’s significant achievement of qualifying for the Asian Women’s Cup, next year in Australia, wants to maintain the recipe as a part of preparation for the main event.
The 50-day preparatory camp and playing preparatory matches against four stronger teams, including Russia, the Korea Republic and Uzbekistan turned out to be major factors behind the team’s consistent performance in the recently concluded Asian Cup qualifiers where Indian women defeated Thailand finally in the concluding match to ensure qualification for the Asian Cup next year.
Crispin Chhetri, the coach who was overjoyed with the achievement, expressed his satisfaction through WhatsApp texts on Sunday morning before boarding the flight for New Delhi.
His messages were, “It is a massive thing for Indian football. It is a ray of hope for Indian women’s football.” Chhetri also revealed, “We knew we can.”
The senior national women’s team lost all four preparatory matches. But playing against stronger teams helped the girls gain maturity to a level that was reflected in their confidence while playing against Thailand on Saturday.
Firstly, the AIFF wants to continue with Crispin Chhetri as coach of the senior national women’s team for the Asian Cup next March. Secondly, going through the players’ engagements with their respective clubs in the domestic competitions, the AIFF wants to organize a long-term preparatory camp for the main event. Thirdly, the Federation has already started planning to provide preparatory matches for the senior national women’s team against a stronger side before the final event.
However, the AIFF top brass is also optimistic about the national under-20 women’s team’s qualification for the AFC Under-20 Women’s Asia Cup. The team will be playing against Myanmar, Indonesia, and Turkmenistan. Myanmar will host the matches, to be held from 6th August to 10th August in a single round-robin format.
Under the guidance of Swedish coach Joakim Alexandersson, the national under-20 women’s team have been training since 10th December last year. The reason behind the AIFF and coach’s optimism is that these girls defeated most of the participating teams in the recently concluded IWL-2 to qualify for the elite IWL this season while representing the Indian Arrows women’s team.
