Igor Stimac ready to test new faces as India takes on Bahrain with an eye on the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers

Indian national team will play Bahrain in an international friendly on 23rd March as they look to prepare for the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers which is scheduled later this year. The Blue Tigers have travelled to Bahrain and will also face Belarus in the second friendly.

The Blue Tigers will be in action after several months, the last time Igor Stimac led his team to the field was against Nepal in the SFF Championship last October. A lot has changed since then and the Croatian will hope that his team delivers to their best levels in both the friendly matches.

Ahead of the first match Igor Stimac addressed the media and shared thoughts about his team, their opponents and much more.

Stimac has announced a 25-man squad for this trip to Bahrain and in this squad, seven new faces have received their first national team callup. When asked about the reason to bring such a big squad for two matches Stimac highlighted a lot of uncertainties.

“To be honest, in such a circumstance I still don’t know what I’m going to try. I’m yet to know how many players I’ll be having here for the games. Then I’ll try to manage to put the best XI and try a few things,” Stimac stated.

He then shared how excited he was to see some new players flourish in the recenty concuded Indian Super League. He is eager to find out that whether they can do it at the international level against top quality opponents.

“As you noticed the ISL was extremely exciting and we’ve seen some new players which is really optimistic for us. I’m going to give chance to the new boys and check how they can do at the international level against stronger opposition and if we can count on them for the upcoming AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers,” the Croatian tactician added.

The major blow for the Indian team has to be the absence of Sunil Chhetri, who was deemed injured at the national camp in Pune and was ruled out from this trip to Bahrain. While Stimac states that he has players like Liston Colaco, Manvir Singh and others, he wants the entire team to step up and replace Chhetri to help the team soar forward.

“Of course, we have the likes of Manvir (Singh), Rahim Ali, Liston (Colaco), VP (Suhair) and the other boys to replace Sunil,” mentioned Igor Stimac.

“But, most of all, the whole team needs to replace Sunil and his goals. Until now, we didn’t have problems in creating chances when Sunil wasn’t there. But the thing is I expect these players to show up, take responsibility and forget about Sunil. He’ll join us for the upcoming qualifiers, but we need to start to get used to playing without Sunil.”, Stimac concluded.