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English coach enlisted for team
The recent success of Asian teams like South Korea, Japan and China in the World Cup seems to have prodded India into making some changes too. The Football Fede
- NDTVSports
- Updated: February 25, 2007 08:28 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Jamshedpur:
The recent success of Asian teams like South Korea, Japan and China in the World Cup seems to have prodded India into making some changes too. The Football Federation of India has enlisted the services of an English coach to train the team. India has a FIFA ranking of 123 and one of the ways to improve on that has been the idea of getting foreign coaches. Uzbek coach Ismail Akhmedov is currently in-charge of the junior team and the senior team will now have Englishman Stephen Constantine. He thinks the team has potential courtesy their impressive showing in the World Cup qualifiers last year. Stephen Constantine, coach of the Indian team, said, "It's a big job and has huge potential. We missed the qualifying for the second round by a point ability's there it will take time to produce the ability." Before coming to India, Stephen had been coaching the football team in Nepal which had won the bronze medal in the SAF Games. But the Englishman says it's going to be a while before India can match up to the heroics of Japan and South Korea. "It's easy to say that we should be in World Cup but if you ask Koreans, Chinese or Japanese. How long it took them to reach before they reach World Cup and sacrifices they've to make it's not done, you need eight to 10 years." Sukhvinder Singh, technical director, said, "There is no need to lose hope even though there are a lot more nations playing football now. I think this team has a lot of promise." So far 32 players have enlisted in the training camp in Jamshedpur, but Indian captain Baichung Bhutia has still not arrived. And the team's big test will be the Asian Games where they have been clubbed in the same group as China.Topics mentioned in this article
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