Connect with us

Football

Gurpreet promises for another fight against Qatar

Published

on

Ray Sportz News Desk: It was India’s fourth winless game in a row in the FIFA World Cup 2026 and AFC Asian Cup 2027 Preliminary Joint Qualification after a 0-0 draw against Kuwait on Thursday evening in Kolkata, a result that diminished their hopes of progressing to the third round for the first time ever.

Head coach Igor Stimac made his dejection known after the match. “We’re obviously disappointed with the end result. It was tough as we expected. They opened the game much better, with much more confidence and competency in passing and moving. It took us some time to gear up to start passing the ball and moving into areas where we could create danger. And I will say that the general passing speed was the biggest struggle we had tonight. It was not good enough to break down Kuwait.

“Even in the situations when we put pressure on them with continuous attacks, there was no quality in the delivery to help them. We could see that Kuwait have lots of individual quality in their team,” said Stimac.

While the match was pretty even in terms of statistics – Kuwait slightly edging possession by 52 to 48, and India registering 15 shots to the visitors’ 13 – Gurpreet Singh Sandhu was the busier of the two goalkeepers, making four huge saves.

“Our best player of the night was Gurpreet, which is not a good sign,” said Stimac. “It’s fantastic for everyone in the team to have such a goalkeeper here. We never had any doubts about what he can do and how much he can help the team, which he did in a fabulous way tonight.”

And it wasn’t to be for Sunil Chhetri, who couldn’t depart the pitch of his last India game with three points. The legendary skipper now turns into another fan among millions as India travel to Doha to take on Qatar in their final Group A match on June 11. Afghanistan’s 0-0 draw with Qatar later on Thursday meant that India remained in the second spot with five points. Afghanistan are also on five, but trail on goal difference, while Kuwait are still bottom with four points. Should India beat Qatar and maintain their higher goal difference than Afghanistan, they will qualify for the next round. A draw will also be enough for the Blue Tigers in case Kuwait and Afghanistan’s clash in Kuwait City also ends all square.

“I feel really sorry for Sunil. He didn’t go with a very important win. But on the other hand, we don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves because we’re still alive. So I need to do everything as a coach as I can in the next five days to create an environment of belief. It’s a very different challenge against the Asian champions. It’s a small hope but it’s still there, and we need to believe, go there and give it our best shot to try to win the game,” said Stimac.

Gurpreet Singh Sandhu added, “We’ll prepare for it like any other game, but obviously this time we won’t have Sunil bhai with us, which is sad but we, as a nation, need to cope with that and move forward. We need to prepare in the best possible manner because any game is not lost before it’s played. We’ll go to Qatar to get all three points.”

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Football

ISL 2024/25: Jamshedpur FC snatch a tricky win in 1st leg semifinal

Published

on

Sourav Mukherjee, Jamshedpur: Khalid Jamil’s Jamshedpur FC lit up JRD Tata Sports Complex on thursday evening with a late winner in a 2-1 win over mighty Mohunbagan. JFC took the lead in the 24th minute of the match by Javier Siverio’s goal. Somehow, Mohunbagan has managed to get the equaliser in the first half, by a stunning goal from Jason Cummings.

Jamil and his men came out on the top against the shield champion Mohunbagan. In the second half Jose Molina tried to take out the match from the Red Miners. But in the 91st minute Javi Hernandez scored the late winner for Jamshedpur FC.

Continue Reading

Football

PSG eliminates Liverpool on penalties

Published

on

Ray Sportz Web Desk: Paris Saint-Germain produced a historic turnaround to progress to the Champions League quarter-finals at Liverpool’s expense as they triumphed 4-1 on penalties after a 1-0 second leg win at Anfield.

Never in Liverpool’s history had they lost a European tie after winning the first leg away from home but Ousmane Dembele’s early strike brought the French champions level at 1-1 on aggregate. PSG were then perfect with their four spot-kicks, while Gianluigi Donnarumma saved from Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones.

Barcelona cruised past Benfica with Raphinha scoring twice and Lamine Yamal once in a 3-1 win at home.

The Catalan club advanced 4-1 on aggregate score after last week’s 1-0 victory and will play either Borussia Dortmund or Lille in the quarterfinals.

After a 3-0 first-leg win, Bayern Munich had no trouble advancing past German rival Bayer Leverkusen.

Continue Reading

Football

Maclaren is looking for double

Published

on

Ray Sportz Web Desk: 11 goals and two assists in 22 matches in the current ISL. Such statistics are enviable for any footballer. Jamie McLaren is already the owner of 11 goals in the Mohun Bagan jersey after stepping foot in India. The Bagan crowd keeps an eye on this Aussie star in important matches. In an interview given to Ray Sportz before stepping foot in the knockouts, Jamie McLaren talked about his goals.

Q: What about the pressure of expectations? How do you deal with the pressure?

Jemmie: Nothing new from when I was a young kid. You wanted to play in big clubs, big crowds, big leagues and I never felt any sort of pressure. Like I said in previous interviews, the minute I landed, the support I had straight away, I knew that they were going to support me. So when you have the love and the support and the care of good people, you just want to give everything. And I think it was a little sad that I got injured straight away, but I did everything possible, flew to Mumbai, flew to Australia to get myself right, my neck a few procedures and found myself fit. And once I was fit, I was ready to go and just had to earn the trust of the coach. Okay, in this season.

Q: You have scored 11 goals for Mohunbagan, & last year the number was the same. But which one is the best for you?

Jemmie: This season, because obviously more goals, more trophies. So yeah, without a shadow of a doubt, it’s definitely this season. So I want to build on this. I think last year I played 28 games, played with a few injuries, and a couple of broken toes. So this season, other than missing pre-season, I’ve been pretty good with the body and really happy. And we’ve got four games to go in this season in terms of winning another trophy. So the full confidence is there, we’re going to have a little break. And I’m used to these one-off games, I’m used to the semifinals. We have that in Australia with two legs and then you play in a playoff grand final. So I’m really keen to get underway, but there’s obviously a big game in front of our crowd lifting the shield. Okay, you are playing with so many young players here in this team.

Q: What do you think of the young footballers in India? Perhaps, you can play the role of a mentor?

Jemmie: Yeah, really good. When I first signed in the first couple of weeks when I was training, there were a lot more younger faces and yeah, they have to earn the trust of the coach. They have to earn the respect of the players, the older players. But they’re holding their own. And I think the ones that have got their opportunity this year have really taken it. And we’re learning from them, they’re learning off us. Like I said, it’s really a together unit. You don’t win trophies with 11 players, you win with 24, 25 and we’re lucky to have that. I’ve had a few injuries this year and the ones that have stepped in have really held their own. And that just shows that they’re hungry for success as well. But one thing is, every game you can’t take for granted. Every minute you get, don’t take those for granted because the coach has shown that he wants to trust everybody and this season is no different.

Q: You have come to India with lots of expectations in your mind. Do you think it has been fulfilled?

Jemmie: Not yet because I obviously had the mind of winning the Shield and winning the playoff trophy. So to do the double is definitely the highest goal that I set. And unfortunately, circumstances were taken out of our hands with the Asian Champions League. I played in that tournament before, and scored goals in Asian tournaments. But to be taken away this year, we never got a chance to play. So we’ve done that, we’ve qualified for next season. We look forward to showing how powerful we can be in Asia because when I looked at the group and I looked at the games, I really think we could have had an imprint in this year’s Asian Champions League. But it wasn’t my fault for anyone at the club. It was taken out of our hands and we just had to focus on getting the Shield and getting qualified again for Asia. So in my mind, we’re halfway there to what I wanted to do and we’ve still got another trophy at hand. Thank you.

Continue Reading

Trending