The national football team will assemble next week to train in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and play a number of warm-up matches in preparation for the Asian Cup that starts next month. First they will face Oman and then take on India, with the rest of the warm-up matches yet to be confirmed. For India, although it has long been regarded as an underdog in Asian football, it has qualified for the Asian Cup for three consecutive times in recent years and has become one of the opponents that the national football team needs to pay attention to. In the round of 36 in the Asian zone of the World Preliminaries, the overall performance of the Indian team was eye-catching.
They first challenged 1980 Asian Cup champions Kuwait away and won 1-0 to earn the crucial three points. The victory not only ended India's embarrassing record of failing to win against Kuwait in the 21st century, but also completed revenge on its opponents, who suffered a 9-1 defeat in a friendly in 2010.
In addition, India is behind seeded Qatar in the group stage, and the battle for a place will be mainly between India, Kuwait and weaker Afghanistan. As such, India's win over Kuwait away from home will be crucial for their qualification prospects. Although they lost to Qatar in the second round, which resulted in Kuwait being overtaken by Kuwait in the group and dropping from three points from two rounds to third in the group, India need not be overly concerned.
In their next fixtures, India will face Afghanistan back-to-back and they will be expected to take nine points from both of those gamesAnd Kuwait will play Qatar in a row and is likely to lose in a row. That way, by the time the fifth round comes, India will only need to draw at home to Kuwait to qualify for the round of 18. According to the latest FIFA world rankings, India is ranked 102nd and 18th in Asia, which shows that they have made some progress in recent years.
For example, in March 2015, they were ranked 173rd, in January 2017 they jumped to 129th, and in August 2017 they jumped to 97th, a rise of 76 places in just two years, just three places away from the team's all-time high. According to the data, the Indian men's football team qualified for the World Cup one step earlier than the national football team. India had qualified for the 1950 World Cup, but was denied out due to FIFA's ban on barefoot play at the time.
India is eager to return to the World Cup finals as the 2026 World Cup expands and increases the number of places in the Asian zone to eight5, which gives India new hope. At present, India will compete fiercely with teams such as the national football team, Vietnam, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. For the national football team, as India continues to grow in strength, they need to start paying attention to this potentially formidable opponent.