Indian football team lost an international friendly to the United Arab Emirates. For a team ranked forty places below their opponents in the...
Indian football team lost an international friendly to the United Arab Emirates. For a team ranked forty places below their opponents in the Fifa rankings, the outcome was on expected lines.
But the Blue Tigers lost the game 0-6. The gulf between the two teams on the night was bigger than what it should have been.
UAE on their part were clinical and ruthless during the game and made India pay for every mistake they made. The problem for India though was that the magnitude of their errors was so big that it didn’t take a lot for UAE to exploit it.
Bad result, worse performance
Ahead of the game, coach Igor Stimac was full of warnings for his players who had earned plaudits for holding higher-ranked Oman to a 1-1 draw despite not playing too well. The Croatian coach though was wary.
“Our players will need to understand that this is not the ISL where there is a lot of space and time to control the ball in the middle. If you behave the way you do in ISL in international matches, you will be badly hurt,” Stimac had said before the game.
The performance against UAE showed that the players didn’t pay heed to the coach’s words and fell to a...
