New Delhi: The will was there but lack of competitive experience did not help India’s cause in the U-17 World Cup, felt the players who represented the country in their maiden FIFA tournament. But despite three losses in Group, there were gains aplenty as far as Indian football is concerned.
Most importantly it was the crowd turnout at the Jawaharlal Stadium here that surprised all. Indian football has mostly been club or franchise-centric. However, for the first time one saw plus-40,000 spectators present in all the three games. Such huge numbers have rarely happened in matches of the national side and this indeed is a good omen for Indian football.
Captain of the colts, Amarjit Singh stated that the tournament had been a huge learning curve for them. “The experience gained was very good. We were playing against top teams in the world and Ghana are two-time champions. We learnt a lot from all the teams we played against,” Amarjit said after the game, Thursday.
“We had team meetings and we had resolved we will give not 100 per cent but 200 per cent. We wanted to make the fans happy who had turned out in massive numbers to support us. However, it was our lack of experience that prevented us from doing so. The basic difference is that we started playing football after we were 10 years old. However, players of other teams had done their basics by the time they were five or six,” added the Indian captain.
In spite of the agony of the losses they had to go through, quite a few of the Indian side demonstrated that they have the potential to become stars of the future. More importantly, they showed that they had the gumption to fight against superior teams and did not suffer from any complex.
India’s best gains from the tournament have been goalkeeper Dheeraj Singh and Boris Singh. However, the likes of Amarjit, Jeakson Singh, Aniket Jadhav, Anwar Ali also showed that India have got the successors to players like Sunil Chhetri, Sandesh Jinghan and Bhaichung Bhutia. Senior men’s team goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu has been all praise for Dheeraj. “He is a fantastic potential, a star for the future. I am sure what he has learnt from the U-17 World Cup, which will stand him in good stead.”
Jeakson who scripted his name in the annals of Indian football, being the first from the national side to score a goal in a FIFA event, with a strike against Colombia was also candid enough to admit that they cannot just relax. “We need to work really hard in future if we have to compete at this level,” said Jeakson. “Ghana players were very strong and fast and they showed what modern football is all about.”
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