FIFA World Cup 2022 Qualifiers - 3 Reasons why India could not live up to expectations

#1 The lack of goals

Source: Indiatoday.com

At the end of the day, football is all about goals and that is something India have lacked. In the five games, the Blue Tigers have only scored three goals.

All of them have come from a set-piece. The fact that they are yet to score a single goal from open play is extremely concerning and something that does not reflect well on the coach.

While a lot of it can be attributed to tactical issues and the change of system, the problems are unfortunately much deeper. One of the biggest problems is a lack of creativity. While the players have missed some easy chances, they have created very few genuine goal-scoring opportunities.

However, the bigger problem is that there is a dearth of genuine and consistent goal-scorers in Indian football except for Sunil Chhetri at the moment. With the Indian captain having only one goal to his name in four games, it's hardly surprising that the goals have dried up for Stimac's men.

Quite sadly, there does not seem to be an immediate solution to the problem. In the last two seasons of the Indian Super League apart from Chhetri, everyone in the list of top five scorers were foreigners. In fact, last season apart from him, no Indian scored more than five goals in the entire season.

Manvir Singh and Farukh Choudhary are the latest players the coach has turned to provide solutions to the issue. While both are talented players, they are yet to prove themselves as players capable of consistently finding the back of the net for their respective clubs.

The attacking prowess is the biggest issue facing Stimac at the moment and until he can find and mould someone capable of regularly scoring goals not a lot is going to change in the results department.