Yet another hectic month has gone by and we are now preparing for another international tournament, this time the inaugural Afro-Asian Games. A number of serious injury problems have beset us as a result of our State associations forcing our players to play in too many games; in some case I have players who have played 15 games in a month!!!! Really can’t understand the point and as usual it is the National team that suffers.

To explain briefly in India it is the State associations that control the clubs and not the national association, this can sometimes lead to problems as each state wants to conduct there own league. The result being that they try to get as many games as possible and our best players are playing in meaningless games in atrocious conditions. Personally I feel that until the clubs are solely under the umbrella of the AIFF we will always struggle to compete against the other top countries in Asia.

We had also hosted an U19 tournament with Iran, Uzbekistan and Bangladesh as our guest’s. We had decided to enter two teams in order to give much needed experience to boys who ordinarily would not have had the opportunity to play International matches.

Though we finished third and fourth we learned a great deal about the calibre and character of some of our players which was the whole point, they now go on and face Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan for the right to play in the U20 Asian Cup Finals to be held in Malaysia in the new year. The games will be held Ashkabat the capital of Turkmenistan and will be very tough matches; hopefully we can do the business and get through to the finals.

Meanwhile our U17s face Afghanistan and Bhutan and those games will be held in India sometime in December for the right to play in the finals in Japan.

Getting back to the Afro Asian Games we are off to Thailand to play against their National side as preparation for the games and then back to Hydrabad where the games will be played.

The other teams involved consist of Cameroon, Burkino Faso, Mozambique, Angola, Iran, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, and of course India.

What an experience it promises to be and I am really looking forward to the games.

All the best

Stephen