Qatar 3-1 India: What Went Wrong For Team India

India had a great start to their Olympic Qualification match against Qatar scoring as early as in the 8^th minute. Within a few minutes, goalkeeper Katttimani saved a penalty. But suddenly after that, the team lost the string of the match. Here is an analysis of the match India played and the way they did.

1. Lack of Ball Possession:

At the end of the day India had the ball for less than 40% of time. And in football you cannot do anything unless you have the ball. And the time Indian players had the ball with them, they didn’t show any intention to keep it. It seems the instruction to the players was to leave the ball as far from the body as possible. Getting the ball away quickly may be a good idea while defending an attack, but it is not always necessary. Moreover, when our players are not great sprinters, hugely powerful or very tall keeping the ball and playing with short passes might have been the better idea.

2. Playing long ball:

As I mentioned in the previous point, the moment Indian players got to touch the ball, they aimed it high with the hope that it will reach to someone beyond the opponent defence. It is true that Qatar defence was not very much comfortable defending long balls, but our attackers were also not able to take any benefit out of that. The problems with long balls are plenty. Firstly, they are not accurate and may reach closer to the opponent than own teammate. Also, it gives the defenders time to position themselves to tackle the opponent as soon as he receives the ball. If we did have some tall and strong striker with good heading ability, this technique might have work. But surely not with the team we had.

3. Depending too much on Raju’s long throw in’s:

The only time India looked dangerous and the fans could hope for a breakthrough were when India were awarded throw in from the opponent half. Other than that, the Qatari defence did not face any big trouble to keep Indian attackers at bay. Other than Lalrindika’s through ball for Jeje that almost created a chance, India never tried to use the centre of the pitch to attack. They were happy to try for luck from the long throws from their captain Raju Eknath Gaekwad. One thing is sure, throw in can be a surprise element in the attack but can never be the gameplan for a team.

4. Raju’s throws became predictable:

One has to accept the fact that our captain Raju was dangerous with the ball whenever there was a throw-in in the opponent half. With his powerful and accurate throws he created a mess in the Qatar defence almost every time. But after the first half, the opponent coach realised that there was no specific plan even from the throws. The idea was to force the opponent defence make mistakes and take benefit of that. So in the second half, instead of random efforts to clear the long throw, the goalkeeper came forward to collect the ball. And suddenly, the long throw looked fascinating, but not dangerous.

5. Man Marking:

This is one thing upon which coach Desmond Bulpin has to work a lot. Indian defence had a better performance than they normally have, they made good interceptions, valiant tackles but what they really lacked was proper marking of players. Almost every time Qatar attacked one or two of their players were left unmarked. This helped them to continue their passing game and also confused our defenders. Only if this is improved, there is any hope of India making a resurgence in the home leg of the tie.

6. Lack of faith:

One of the reasons of Indian players taking long shots was the lack of faith. They did not have the faith in themselves and their teammates when they received the ball. The fear of losing it chased them throughout the match and nobody dared to keep the ball and think of making a pass. When playing at this level, the players must learn to be more confident about their own talent and about their teammates then only anything can be achieved.

7. Lack of skill and power:

The best thing about last night’s match was that Indian team was not over-awed or totally overpowered by the Qataris. But still they did lack in power and skill. The Qataris were more confident, skilled and powerful and that showed in the game. However, this is one front where we are behind every time we reach the ground. May be coming here all our arguments come to a halt. May be due to the lack of skill and power we are not able to keep the ball and due to this only we cannot make defence splitting run through the heart of the opponent defence. But, we know this from a long time and really do not expect to find out some hugely talented and powerful player out of the blue. The struggle of our boys in blue will be to overcome this difficulty with the proper guidance, team spirit and unity.

As of now, we can just hope that India win the home match with a margin of 2 goals not conceding more than 1 goal. 2-0 win will be sufficient to take us through. The task may look difficult, but surely not impossible. A few moments of brilliance may change the colour of the match within a few minutes. We will be waiting for the match to be held on 23^rd June at Pune.