Riffa: Indian Senior National Football team are set to play their first encounter with Belarus ever at Bahrain National Stadium on March 26 in a preparatory friendly ahead of AFC Asian Cup 2023 qualifiers.
Earlier on March 23, India had played Bahrain at the same venue, where a last minute goal by the hosts handed India, a loss . The encounter saw Rahul Bheke score his first international goal for India. In the same game, head coach Igor Stimac handed out international debuts to five players- Roshan Naorem Singh, Danish Farooq, VP Suhair, Aniket Jadhav and Anwar Ali. A very shaky defence and a lack luster midfield stripped the Blue Tigers of a win. However, with only 14 players available for selection, Stimac made the best use of resources available to him. The absence of talisman Sunil Chettri along with Sahal Abdul Samad and Aashique Kuruniyan was throughly failed.
While, the whole squad is available for selection against Belarus, Stimac promised of bringing out something different from his pockets knowing that the encounter against a team placed 10 above India in the world index will not be an easy affair.
“There will be some big changes for the Belarus game. I want to introduce a new team with fresh faces and energy which will give us more stability in the passing front,” the Head Coach averred. “Friendly games are the best opportunity to give players the chance to perform, and I believe if you don’t take risks, you will never succeed,” he added.
“Belarus are a very well-known opposition to me. They are much more technical than Bahrain. They have recently played against higher ranking teams such as Belgium and Wales. They play much more defensive and counter attacking football. But I don’t see them being that much defensive against us,” Stimac highlighted.
The probable line-up against Belarus seems to be a quite a cohesive one. Skipper and custodian Gurpreet Singh Sandhu is set to start under the bars . Along with him, Seriton Fernandes, Sandesh Jhingan, Chinglensana Singh, Naorem Roshan Singh; Anirudh Thapa, Jeakson Singh; VP Suhair, Liston Colaco; Manvir Singh, Rahim Ali are set to start. The coach can bring in the likes of Aniket, Danish, and Akash Mishra later in the game.
The game can be viewed in the Bahrain Sports channel on YouTube from 9.30pm IST. AIFF will also be streaming the game on their official YouTube channel with Arabic commentary.
