The Indian men’s football team will now shift focus to the AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers. They will face Singapore on October 9 (away) and October 14 (home). After the recent bronze medal finish in the CAFA Nations Cup in Tajikistan, fans will expect the Blue Tigers to show the same fighting spirit.
However, the start to their qualifying campaign has not been ideal. In Group C, India sit at the bottom with just one point from two matches. They suffered a 0-1 defeat against Hong Kong (away) and then managed only a goalless draw against Bangladesh (home).
In an exclusive chat with RevSportz, star goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, one of India’s heroes in the CAFA Nations Cup, shared his thoughts on the upcoming fixtures. He urged the team to carry the same ruthless mindset.
“Hundred per cent, sir. If you don’t believe, then there’s no point coming to the camp and just going through the paces,” said Gurpreet.
“We as a team know what we do, as players we know there’s more to come from us. It’s just that we need to demand more from ourselves when we put on the jersey, and have the desire and hunger to grind out results. It may not look all nice and neat to people, but we are here for a job and that’s to win,” he said.
Gurpreet stressed that nothing less than full focus and maturity will help India in these key games.
“To do that, we have to do whatever it takes. And as I said, I believe that we can do it because if you don’t, there’s no point. Things might have been different because it’s CAFA, not the qualifiers, and October is going to be different. So, we need to have the same kind of ruthless mindset towards it. We can’t be relaxed. We need to do professional and mature jobs in those two games and take it from there. First, do it in Singapore, then come back home and take care of business one game and one day at a time, moving forward,” he added.
Khalid Jami’s first assignment also turned out to be a succesful one. While talking about the new coach’s approach, Gurpreet said: “And about Khalid Sir’s approach, it’s that we are trying to do justice to it. Being an Indian coach, I’m sure he feels more towards the team as well because it is his own country and he is the coach of it. Since Day 1, we have understood this assignment – we didn’t have the time we wanted or we didn’t have minutes in our legs, we can’t use those excuses.”
He further stressed that the team is now working to move away from a defensive mindset.
“We just need to go out there and try to win. For that, we first need to change our mentalities. We can’t go into games thinking ‘draw ho jayega, ya haar jaenge [it’ll be a draw, or we’ll lose]’, so changing our mentality is what we are doing here right now. We even applied this mentality, and thankfully, it worked out for us on a couple of occasions in this tournament. Going forward, we need to build on this,” he concluded.
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