Captain, Leader and Legend Sunil Chhetri led Indian football team is set to take the field against Uzbekistan in their 2nd match of the AFC Asian Cup 2023 on the 18th of January in Qatar.
The Indian football team suffered a 2-0 defeat to Australia in their opening match of the AFC Asian Cup 2023. Despite keeping the scoreline 0-0 for the first 50 minutes of the match, Jackson Irvine and Jordan Bos scored for Australia and won the match to open their account in the tournament.
The next challenge awaits for the Indian football team in the form Uzbekistan in their 2nd match of the tournament. The White Wolves comes into the match having played a 0-0 draw against Syria in their opening match of the tournament.
Going into the match, Uzbekistan leads in the head-to-head battle having won 4 out of the total 6 matches played between the sides whereas the remaining 2 matches have ended in a draw, thus no win for India. But the Indian football team did came close to winning against Uzbekistan in 1999. Let's take a deep down memory lane.
It was 24th of November, the year was 1999, the venue was Abu Dhabi's Tahnoun bin Mohammed Stadium, Team India taking on the Uzbekistan football team in an AFC Asian Cup 2000 qualifier match.
In an exciting end-to-end football, Uzbekistan drew the first shot with Uzbekistan's Shuhrat Rahmonqulov opening the goal scoring at the 17th minute of the match. But, a rampant Indian team took no less than 60 seconds to find the equalizer. Jo Paul Ancheri, the Indian footballer from Kerala, scored the equalizer for India at the 18th minute of the match.
In the 2nd half of the match, renowned Indian football player I.M Vijayan gave the Indian team the lead in the 55th minute of the match. The Indian team then defended valiantly and when everything was looking so good for the Indian football team to pick-up a 2-1 win, things went downhill for the Blue Tigers.
Uzbekistan's defender Andrei Fyodorov scored the equalizer for the Uzbekistan team in the 77th minute of the match. But the real heart-break came for the Indian team at the 85th minute of the match when Uzbek's midfielder Nikolay Shirshov scored the winner for Uzbekistan. All this happened inside the span of 10 minutes, which broke a lot of Indian fans' hearts.
Team India also didn't had a great campaign in the AFC Asian Cup 2000 qualifier as the Blue Tigers finished 3rd in their group with 4 points from 4 matches that included one win against Sri Lanka and a draw against Bangladesh.
0 Comments