Wednesday, September 24, 2025

‘It was good studying expertise for us’, says India head coach Igor Stimac after AFC Asian Cup exit

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QATAR: Indian soccer group head coach Igor Stimac expressed disappointment as his plan fell brief, leading to a slim 1-0 defeat to Syria of their closing group sport of the AFC Asian Cup on the Al Bayt Stadium in Qatar on Tuesday.

India entered this sport on the heels of two defeats of their opening matches in opposition to Australia and Uzbekistan. Solely a win on this sport may have saved their hopes alive to qualify for the Spherical of 16 as among the finest third-place groups. Nevertheless, India conclude their marketing campaign with one other defeat and returns with zero factors on the board.

“Congratulations to the Syrian group; they deserved it ultimately. They have been extra highly effective and extra relaxed in these closing third moments, ” Stimac mentioned within the post-match press convention. “(It was a) good studying expertise for us, I’d say, as a result of general, in three video games, we proved that we will compete at this degree. Everyone sees what the lacking factors are within the Indian play: scoring targets, which comes with having good aim scorers within the group – folks with confidence in entrance of the aim, ” he added.

The Croatian believes that collaborating on the largest stage of Asian soccer will undoubtedly present the gamers with beneficial publicity, in the end contributing to their improvement for the long run.

“We will take an excellent lesson from right here, and within the subsequent version of the AFC Asian Cup, we’ll be a lot stronger, undoubtedly, ” Stimac opined.

Nevertheless, the marketing campaign proved unsatisfactory for the Indian soccer group. Not solely did they fail to register any factors on the board, however additionally they struggled to attain targets in any of their three group-stage matches.

Stimac attributes this goal-scoring problem to the absence of an skilled centre ahead, figuring out it as one of many main causes for India’s incapacity to transform promising goal-scoring alternatives into precise targets.

“The group produced sufficient probabilities to attain targets, and also you all know in India why we aren’t scoring targets on the worldwide degree. It ought to occur once we begin having Indian gamers within the centre-forward place; then, we’ll have many extra goal-scorers for the nationwide group, ” he said.

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