Jordan 2-1 India: 9 instances that prove friendly was nothing more than a soap opera

#8 Players getting stuck in Kuwait for 32 hours

The first batch was scheduled to take a connecting flight from Kuwait. But the flash floods not only ravaged Jordan but their middle-east neighbours also. As a result, the Kuwait Airport was inundated and no flights could take off as scheduled.

The players had to wait the entire Wednesday night waiting for an update of their flight. There were no hotels available for the players to take rest and they had to spend the whole time in the lounge.

That too was crowded as several other flights were also delayed and the passengers had to endure the same fate as the players. At one point in time, there was a food shortage at the airport.

They got the green signal on Friday afternoon and only reached Amman at 7 PM IST. This was followed by long immigration processes which took another couple of hours.

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#7 No practice session or pre-match press conference

No press conference took place

The full team got assembled only on Friday night, less than 24 hours before the kick-off. So, there was no question of having a practice session before the match. Neither there were any press conferences. The players were already exhausted and both the parties decided to call off their respective press conferences.

According to the rulebook, there has to be an official press conference of the participating teams before an international match. Teams should face severe punishment if they don’t follow the rulebook. But given the circumstances, nobody raised a question. Indian players had to take the field without any practice.