Indian football team set to leave for Qatar for preparations ahead of the World Cup Qualifiers

 

Qatar comes to the Indian football team’s aid as they have accepted the request of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) to allow the Blue Tigers to train there ahead of the remaining FIFA  2022 World Cup qualification matches.

The gulf country has also waived off the mandatory hard 10-day quarantine for the Indian players. The Blue Tigers will conduct a preparatory camp for nearly two weeks inside a bio bubble ahead of their first match on June 3rd.

“We are planning to fly the team on May 19 evening. There will be no quarantine (of the players) and they will be in a bio-bubble,” AIFF general secretary Kushal Das told PTI on Saturday.

Kusal Das also clarified that the selected players will assemble in New Delhi and will have their COVID-19 tests, before boarding their flight to Qatar.

Igor Stimac’s men do not have any chance of going through to the next round in the World Cup qualifiers as they are winless from the first half of the matches. They have had a superb draw against Qatar followed by two underwhelming draws against Afghanistan and Bangladesh. However, the worst results were when they lost twice against Oman.

While they are out of the race to qualify for the 2022 World Cup, there is also a AFC Asian Cup berth up for grabs which the Blue Tigers are targeting at the moment. The remaining three matches — against Qatar (June 3), Bangladesh (June 7) and Afghanistan (June 15) — are crucial for Asian Cup qualification.

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in March decided that selecting Qatar as the centralised venue will be the safest option and so they went ahead with the idea. Mainly due to the issues related to COVID-19, quarantine and travel. Therefore all the remaining matches from Group E will be conducted in Qatar.

Earlier the Indian FA planned a national camp in Kolkata May 2 to 21. Following the camp, the team was set to travel to United Arab Emirates (Dubai) and train there and play friendlies with local clubs. However, all those plans did not materialize as the second wave of COVID-19 wreaked havoc in the country resulting in the biggest spike.