India vs Nepal: Naorem Mahesh Singh, Rohit Kumar, and Mehtab Singh slot into Blue Tigers' starting XI | SAFF Championship 2023

For their second group-stage match against Nepal in the SAFF Championship 2023 on Saturday, June 24, India men's national team coach Igor Stimac has opted to shuffle his starting lineup.

While Gurpreet Singh Sandhu has replaced Amrinder Singh between the sticks, only three outfield players from their previous clash against Pakistan have made the cut. The Blue Tigers will field a fresh center-back pairing of Mehtab Singh and Rahul Bheke at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. Nikhil Poojary and Akash Mishra also return to the starting lineup.

In the middle of the park, Bengaluru FC man Rohit Kumar slots in in place of Jeakson Singh. Anirudh Thapa and Sahal Abdul Samad have retained their spots.

The frontline sees a fresh winger pairing in Udanta Singh and Naorem Mahesh Singh. The East Bengal FC wide player has impressed heavily off the bench and Stimac will expect him to replicate those performances right from the get-go.

Unsurprisingly, Sunil Chhetri will lead the attack, in the absence of Ishan Pandita and with Rahim Ali completely out of form.

Their opponents, Nepal, have just two changes in their lineup with Ayush Ghalan replacing Nuwayug Shrestha and Bimal Pandey will make way for Devendra Tamang.

India starting XI: Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, Nikhil Poojary, Rahul Bheke, Mehtab Singh, Akash Mishra, Rohit Kumar, Anirudh Thapa, Udanta Singh, Naorem Mahesh Singh, Sahal Abdul Samad, Sunil Chhetri.

Nepal starting XI: Kiran Kumar Limbu, Sanish Shrestha, Ananta Tamang, Rohit Chand, Ayush Ghalan, Arik Bista, Bimal Gharti Magar, Anjan Bista, Devendra Tamang, Laken Limbu, Manish Dangi.

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"Need to concentrate on ourselves" - India gaffer Igor Stimac ahead of the clash against Nepal

Ahead of the SAFF Championship 2023 group-stage clash, Igor Stimac, in interaction with the AIFF Media Team, lauded the Blue Tigers for their performance against arch-rivals in the tournament opener.

"I am very happy about how we responded to this Pakistan match and now we've already forgotten about that. Some of the boys who didn't play in that match along with boys who had fewer minutes, had a high-intensity training session. These are the things we need to improve a lot more so that we can bring them into the football ground when the time comes."

"We need to concentrate on ourselves. With due respect to every team participating in the tournament, we need to focus on ourselves first," the Croatian tactican added.

Stimac maintained that the need will be for India to focus on themselves and their performances rather than the playing style or the form of the opposition. However, he was quick to admit that the Gorkhalis are a team undergoing transition and will find it difficult during this arduous journey, just like India did a few years back.

"As I said, we know Nepal very well, although they changed head coach a few months ago. The guy is trying to bring some new philosophy to their game and it's not gonna be easy. We know how difficult it was for us four years ago when we started the process of reconstruction of the team, bringing more technical players into the side and implementing new philosophy. It was a process of four and a half years, so we are here now and they are just at the start of this process and it's going to be difficult for them too."

Hence, with a more settled system in play, the Blue Tigers are expectedly the absolute favorites in the tie against Nepal.