Preparation for AFC Asian Cup
Bangalore: India captain Sunil Chhetri wants the national football team to play more away games this year as they prepare for the AFC Asian Cup in 2019.
Chhetri, who is currently playing for Bengaluru FC in the ISL, said that each and every player who dons India colours needs to raise his game by a few notches so that coach Stephen Constantine has a headache while picking the team every time.
“We need to play enough matches away. We generally do well at home, but our away record hasn’t been good. We should try to play against teams ranked eight to 16th in Asia (AFC rankings),” Chhetri told this agency Wednesday, here.
“It’s difficult to play South Korea and Japan as they don’t want to play us. We should get teams who are better than us and play at their home.
“From the players’ side, we need to improve ourselves individually, making sure that the competition for the national team increases and it is a big headache for the coach. Whenever he chooses a team he gets the cream,” the 33-year-old added.
India qualified for the Asian Cup by beating Macau in the qualifiers last year in October. The last time India played in the world’s second-oldest continental football championship was in 2011 under British coach Bob Houghton. India did not win a match and bowed out.
Chhetri said India should look to play teams like the UAE, who are also hosting the Asian Cup, on the road. “We are at the bottom, man. Whoever we get is going to be better than us,” Chhetri said when asked to name the teams they should play friendlies with, leading up to the tournament, starting in January next year.
“In 2011, we got Australia (top ranked), South Korea (third) and Bahrain (fifth) in the main round. It couldn’t have been worse than that mathematically. This time we got Kyrgyzstan, Macau and Myanmar (in the qualifiers). With due respect to them it wasn’t very difficult,” Chhetri informed off. “But then the Asian Cup will be a different ball game altogether.”
