November 5th 2003

What another exciting month over and who could have expected the turn of events at the first ever Afro-Asian Games!
As you may know India were hosting the inaugural games in the lovely city of Hyderabad famous for its pearls but it would turn out to be famous for some of the greatest victories in Indian football history.

I had called the National team together on the 2nd of October as the State leagues were due to finish on or around the 15-18 of September this I thought would then give the national team players a couple of weeks rest after there state league commitments. As usual things did not go according to plan as a number of the state leagues decided that 18 games in a month was not enough and as there would have been a gap (which was meant for the players to rest) they thought they would have another tournament!!!
The end result was as you would expect nine of the thirty players that reported were injured!!! Four from the first eleven and would not make the camp. I decided to give them three days rest as soon as I saw the condition of the players, injured, tired or both. It is a miracle that we did so well.

The timing of the games was also a problem as most of Asia were involved in the qualifiers for the Asian Cup to be held in China next year so all we could manage was a couple of friendly games in Thailand against their U20 and the senior side, results were mixed 0-0 against the juniors and a 0-2 loss at the hands of the senior side, invaluable experience against quality opposition.
On our return to India it was direct to Hyderabad where the groups had been drawn for the games which were to commence on the 20 of November.
We would kick off the tournament against the Rwanda national side who had just qualified for the African Nations Cup Finals in January 2004.

An impressive 3-1 win gave us and the fans a huge lift and it would take as on a great run, the other two teams in our group were Malaysia and Ghana who by the time of our first game had yet to appear!! It turned out that they would not appear and we were left with only three teams in out group. Our scheduled second game was against Malaysia who we beat 2-0 though it must be said a few of there players were missing.
As I mentioned earlier we also had a number of players missing but what’s the point of talking about it although in our case the injuries could have been avoided and that’s what really upsets me, the clubs need to do more to look after the players not play them into the ground
I took a lot of criticism for including IM Vijayan in the squad who is a legend in India as he was supposed to be too old and too fat. When he scored two against Rwanda and another two against Malaysia it was the best way he could shut all his and my critics up. He would go on to finish top scorer in the tournament in what was going to be his last appearance in the National team what a way to go!
So having beaten the teams in our group which we ended up winning we were now slated to face the might of Zimbabwe a mere 85 places above us in the FIFA rankings! Amazing when you think that as the draw was made and the names came out of the hat we were looking for three good performances and the experience of playing against these teams, never mind win the group.

Well what a game against Zimbabwe everything went for us right from the start and we went in at half time with an incredible 3-1 lead! It would get better as about ten minutes in it became 4-1 and match over or so we thought Zimbabwe had other ideas and I think we switched off the crowd were going absolutely crazy and I was just thinking to myself how sweet it is when a penalty was awarded to Zimbabwe which they scored and there was still twenty minutes left! Not three minutes later we had a break away and another penalty this time for us! 5-2 and still there was more to come as again Zimbabwe pressed they did get another in the dying seconds to make the score 5-3 and end an absolute thriller. Yes another game where we were not supposed to win never mind score five against a team ranked 45 in the FIFA rankings.

The final was to be against the very good Uzbekistan team that are always tough and well in a game where we had chances to win we eventually went down 0-1 to a lovely strike in the 91st minute! Against Zimbabwe everything we did came off against Uzbekistan nothing we did came off! That’s football cruel at times ever giving at others, we would have to be content with making history by being the first Indian side in 42 years to win a medal and beat an African team and going home with a silver.

All in all a very rewarding month and to cap it all off I was named as the Asian Football Confederation’s Manager/ Coach of the month, a real honour and obviously I am delighted. I would like to thank the team for all its effort’s which far exceed anyone’s expectations they were fantastic.