FIFA U17 World Cup: 5 positives that India can take from their defeat to USA

#1 A very gritty performance against a top-quality team

India's performance against the USA wasn't very bad considering USA's performances this year

Barring a 4-0 thrashing against Japan at Prague, the USA have won 10 of their remaining 11 matches in 2017 before the World Cup (one match ended in a draw against Mexico after extra-time). Out of these 10 matches, USA have scored 3 or more goals in 9 of them and out of those nine, a minimum of four goals have been scored in six games.

In skipper Josh Sargent and Ayi Akinola, the Young Stars and Stripes have two strikers who have a combined 42 goals between them (not counting the goal scored by Sargent yesterday). Hence, the fact that India conceded just three goals where only one of those was a field goal, it is not a very bad performance.

Resilience poured from the Indian players and they did pretty well to shut out the USA attack on plenty of occasions. Hence, India should take heart from this performance and try to have a much more positive outlook when they play Colombia and Ghana.