India U-17’s Anwar Ali shares a connect, if you will, with two of his Punjabi football-playing predecessors in the senior men’s national team.
While the central defender hails from Hoshiarpur, the same town Balwant Singh calls home, he has more in common with India centre-back Sandesh Jhingan. Both are tall, sport similar hairstyles, and play in the same position.
Another aspect that binds them together, one that is relevant to this story, is the fact that they both had to bide their time before making it to the national time.
Truth be told, this is the case with many of the 21 names that made it to the final India squad for the 2017 Fifa U-17 World Cup, beginning Friday. Many players were dropped or rejected before they could become part of the team. Youth leagues have been initiated but identifying this team has been far from easy.
Negligible youth infrastructure
When India did finally win the bid to host the 2017 U-17 World Cup in 2013, youth infrastructure was at its bare minimum. The All India Football Federation had to open its own academies, as the country’s clubs had neglected youth development for decades, instead concentrating on winning the senior leagues.
There was an Under-18 league but it was of little use to a country that would send its first-ever team to an Under-17 World Cup four years later. The AIFF decided to hold the U-14 Nationals for the first time in 2012 and it comes as no surprise that most of the talent in the squad comes from players picked from that tournament.
Manipur, under the captaincy of Boris Thangjam and the leadership of Devchandra Singh, won the tournament and thus the team’s distinct Manipuri flavour. As many as eight players in India’s 21-member squad hail from the Northeastern state.
On finally winning the bid, Nicolai Adam, a former Azerbaijan youth coach, was hired to spearhead the effort to build a competitive team. Sources close to the German said that he was frustrated when he landed in India as he had expected a more concrete youth league system but was disappointed with the lack of competitive football at this level.
Clubs and states had started assembling Under-14 sides for tournaments such as the Coca Cola Cup, the Subroto Cup, the Nike Manchester United Premier Cup, but would dismantle this set-up as soon as the tournaments would get over, not training all year round.
The Under-15 league did not start until 2015, and the Under-13 I-League will kick off this year. While players from other countries have had a head-start of six to seven years of football, there are some in this squad like Suresh Wangjam who did not start playing football till he was 11.
Exposure tours
Adam would pick 20 players to go with him on an exposure tour of Germany, starting July 2015, where they played 14 games, winning eight, and drawing two, losing the rest. The German was never fully satisfied with the quality of players at his disposal, till his abrupt dismissal seven months prior to the World Cup. But more on that, later.
Players who are expected to be part of the starting line-up Friday evening against the USA such as Anwar Ali and Jeakson Singh, were not part of this effort at this stage. Anwar, in particular, was having a hard time after being released from the AIFF Elite Academy and would almost lose his way before making it to the team in 2017.
At this stage, Aniket Jadhav, who is expected to lead the line for India, was playing as a winger and the Blue Tigers were being led by a boy who has been earmarked as the best forward that this team has seen in three years: Aman Chetri.
The Field reached out to players, officials and staff close to the team, who all had a common point of view: Chetri will be India’s biggest miss. The striker suffered an Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury in late 2016 and has been unable to recover from the injury in time, to make the squad.
Captain Amarjit Singh Kiyam’s inclusion in the team also came about due to the newly assembled U-14 side facing a Chandigarh Football Academy side, which finished runners-up in the Subroto Cup.
CFA won the match with a comprehensive 3-0 scoreline, as Amarjit bagged all three goals. If it wasn’t clear that the AIFF’s hastily-arranged academy side wasn’t up to scratch, this was the first indicator. While Amarjit and Sanjeev Stalin made the side, with Mohammed Mohammad Shahjahan also called up, only to be dropped from the squad altogether later. Jeakson Singh, still growing at this phase, wasn’t even called up.
This was prior to the team’s first tour to Germany. Next up were the AFC U-16 qualifiers where, to their credit, the team qualified for the Championships at home on merit and not just by virtue of being hosts. They put five goals past Bahrain, Chetri bagging a brace while Suresh netted a hat-trick in a 6-0 demolition of Lebanon. A 3-0 loss to Iran was the sole blemish on their record.
What followed was a tour to Spain, where a heavy 5-0 loss to Villareal was the low point, with Adam increasingly unsure about his squad. Abhishek Yadav, Chief Scout and Chief Technical Officer of the U-17 team, said that they scouted over 14,000 players. But watching a 14- or a 15-year-old for 30-60 minutes is hardly scouting, rather looking into sustained performances at this level, the data of which was unavailable to the team for reasons listed above.
Practice matches weren’t always the easiest to manage either. While some fielded overage players, angering Adam, others such as the Goa Football Association decided that they didn’t have enough time to assemble a squad.
At Shillong, Adam angered those who had arranged for the Germans to scout 50 to 70 kids when he claimed that all those who had turned up to the trials were very short and thus ineligible for selection.
In 2016, when the AIFF had reached out to the teams that had made the final round of the U16 I-League to send three players each to the India set-up, some clubs decided that the exercise wasn’t worth the effort, while others chose to hold on to their best players for the league.
Player burnout
Tours to Luxembourg, South Africa, France, Norway and another trip to Germany followed but the real jitters for Adam and his team kicked in when the team played at home at the AFC U-16 Championships in Goa.
Having garnered six points at the qualifiers and several tours later, India were expected to be competitive but earned a solitary point in Goa. Blowing leads against UAE and Saudi Arabia, another 3-0 loss to Iran and a red card for Boris followed, at which point federation officials became increasingly concerned about the team’s performance and Adam’s position.
For the team’s core management, it was time to get back to the drawing board as the German deemed his current crop not good enough. The target has never been made public but it is reliably learnt that the team had aimed for four points at the World Cup. One point at the AFC Championships, with hardly a year to go for the World Cup, was not a good precursor.
Scouting trips had been undertaken to Sikkim, Nagaland, Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Karnataka, including two such trips to Manipur. But in the absence of proper coaching, the boys being scouted had shown insufficient tactical prowess, which was always likely to be the case.
Ninety boys had been involved in the ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams by now, with a lot of chopping and changing unable to deliver results. Some like Rahul KP, were asked to go train with the Under-19’s and were brought back into the fold later.
The Indian team had another problem brewing; they had played a lot of football till that point and injuries had started piling up, which players were afraid to disclose due to a fear of missing out on the World Cup. The schedule was also very demanding, as evidenced by the first tour to Germany, where they played 14 matches in 43 days.
Adam had been so fixated by finding his ideal 11 plus three, that despite having a large squad, he would play the same players day in, day out, hoping that they would get better. Niggles turned into full-blown tears and claimed several casualties by the end of the selection.
Chetri and Narinder Gahlot missed out due to ACL injuries while Shubham Sarangi, another powerful forward who is highly rated by those that have seen him up close, required treatment on his groin after every match, unable to receive enough time to recover.
Player revolt
After a trip to Brazil, the team went for the Granatkin Memorial Cup in Russia, where they suffered their worst-ever loss – 8-0 at the hands of the Russian Under-18s. The team won a solitary match on this tour, a 1-0 victory over Belarus.
Adam, who has been described as aggressive, allegedly indulged in physical abuse on this tour but that has been debunked by many close to the team. The German had always been known to blow his top whenever his team lost but his ex-players call him “one of the finest coaches” they had ever seen.
According to the sources within the team, Adam planned to drop several members of the squad after the tournament once they returned to India and had informed them in advance. The team was clearly in free fall, having won just two of the 16 matches they had played since the start of the Under-16 championships. In all, India would only win five of the 31 competitive matches they would appear in across three years.
What followed was a player revolt, where 21 of the players submitted a signed and written complaint to Praful Patel, instigated by a core group within the team. A former player said that they had been afraid of being shunned by their peers and some signed even though they were unwilling to.
With unhappiness and tension surrounding the team, the axe fell on Adam. Twenty eight months of effort and coaching had not been wasted but would see a new direction. The AIFF received several applications, including Colm Toal and Stuart Pearce. While insiders considered Toal the best man for the job, already familiar with the conditions, the federation opted for Luis Norton de Matos.
Building from scratch
The Portuguese’s first match was a learning experience for all. Playing against Minerva, the U-16 I-League champions, the team lost 1-0.
The AIFF sought to downplay the result, but it was significant in more ways than one. First, the conditions in which the match were held. With the league over, the Minerva boys were sent home and lacked match fitness when they were called back at short notice.
One member of the Minerva team even told The Field that they expected to be beaten 3-0 but found the going surprisingly easy once the match started. Even though the player, by his estimates, was half-fit and most of his teammates played at 70% according to his claim, they were lauded by De Matos and his staff. Minerva did field two 18-year-olds but the manner of their win definitely raised eyebrows as the U-17 team had more match fitness, having played more regularly.
Six boys from the Chandigarh-based academy, including goal-scorer Nongdamba Naorem, captain Jeakson Singh, the previously dropped Shahjahan and Anwar Ali, were called up to the squad.
It was not the first time that the AIFF would obfuscate the result, as a win over a Lega Pro XI was touted as a 2-0 win over the Italian national team. They drew 2-2 against Benfica but the Portuguese club changed its team three times over the course of the 90 minutes. With a settled squad a few days later, Benfica would win 3-0. A 1-1 draw against a second-string Chile side was played up, while wins over fourth- and fifth-division club sides in Europe have been celebrated with gusto.
More importantly, the result yielded six players. In two games against CFA and Minerva, a total of nine players had been selected from the two teams. Could more matches against age-group sides such as Tata Football Academy, Pune City FC and others have brought in more players? We shall never know, unfortunately.
This cannot be put down to the fact that the scouting team didn’t do its best. It’s just that existing systems had been ignored for so long that when it came down to building a competitive side from scratch in three years, they were always going to fall short.
De Matos era
The De Matos regime has seen many changes, including a less confrontational attitude towards the players, and protecting the team to the extent that line-ups and squads in friendlies have not been as public as in the Adam era.
The playing style, more direct under Adam, was now focused on retaining possession and being defensively compact rather than being expansive. The boys have also been happier under the Portuguese, as stated by AIFF president Praful Patel at a press conference in New Delhi last month.
Officials also said that the Portuguese likes to spend more time on the training ground, rather than play more matches against opponents. Under Adam, India played more than 90 matches in his 28 months in charge, while De Matos has presided over about 20 matches in eight months.
De Matos is also slated to continue in his position as the head coach of the outfit after the World Cup. The team may play in the I-League for more exposure and India has bid for the Under-20 World Cup in 2019, so the AIFF clearly has one eye on that.
With players from the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, PSG, Manchester United, and Chelsea at this World Cup, it is not a stretch to say that this Indian team is among the weakest at this tournament.
The biggest legacy of this tournament is that youth systems are finally being taken care of, but problems of age-fraud and ineffective coaching remain. The upcoming Under-17 teams may not get the exposure that this team has received, with over 25,000 air miles and tours to 15 countries under their belt. Whether this was a one-time effort by the AIFF or a sustained push to upgrade youth football in the country, that is something only time will tell.