Nishu Kumar and Jackichand Singh were the two new faces named in Stephen Constantine’s 22-man India squad from the one that played against China last month. The Blue Tigers’ next assignment is against Jordan on Saturday.
Constantine mentioned that the forthcoming friendly against Jordan will “aid India’s preparation” for the AFC Asian Cup in UAE. “We want to do well in AFC Asian Cup and the clash against Jordan will aid us. Jordan are a good side and they have a number of good players in their ranks,” he commented.
Jordan, who are ranked 112 in the latest Fifa rankings, narrowly lost 1-2 to World Cup finalists Croatia in their last friendly fixture.
The news of recent floods in Jordan did crop up in talk among the players and striker Jeje Lalpekhlua echoed the team needs to “move ahead”.
“There’s nothing one can do about natural calamities,” Jeje said. “We have to accept it and move ahead. Come what may, we are to play our hearts out and there won’t be any compromise on that,” he stated. “Our prayers stay with the people of Jordan during these tough times.”
Winger Halicharan Narzary said that team will try to cope with the absence of veteran Sunil Chhetri. “Undoubtedly, we are going to miss Sunil bhai but we can’t just sit back and cry over it,” he said.
“We’ll try our level best to churn out a positive result in Amman. The match against China was massive for us. Jordan won’t be anything lesser, if not bigger. We have to keep our heads down and keep working to get something positive out of this tie.”
Squad
Goalkeepers: Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, Amrinder Singh.
Defenders: Pritam Kotal, Nishu Kumar, Sandesh Jhingan, Anas Edathodika, Salam Ranjan Singh, Subhasish Bose, Narayan Das, Jerry Lalrinzuala.
Midfielders: Udanta Singh, Jackichand Singh, Pronay Halder, Anirudh Thapa, Vinit Rai, Germanpreet Singh, Halicharan Narzary, Ashique Kuruniyan.
Forwards: Jeje Lalpekhlua, Sumeet Passi, Balwant Singh, Manvir Singh.
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