By Samindra Kunti in Mumbai
October 8 – Hosts India suffered a humiliating 8-0 defeat at the hands of the United States, a result that exposed the country’s systemic failures at grassroots levels in the country.
On the eve of the curtain raiser, India coach Thomas Dennerby had said that his team would not concede too many goals and would be competitive, but those words backfired in spectacular fashion as the United States gave his side a firm reality check in Bhunebaneswar, almost hitting double digits.
After nine minutes Melina Rebimbas opened the scoring for the Americans. By half-time, the US were five ahead.
Over the 90 minutes, India failed to register a single shot on target, such was the gulf in class between the two sides.
The Indian girls had gone on exposure tours to Italy, Norway and Spain to wrap up an intense eighth-month training camp but no amount of practice on the field or friendly matches could disguise just how far behind Indian women’s football at the youth level is.
“For very long we have defended corners really well but then we hadn’t played a team of this level. USA should go really far in this tournament,” said India head coach Thomas Dennerby.
“But we can do better and I hope we can show that in the next two games. I think the girls were nervous; we didn’t even try to pass the ball to each other. When we did it was a weak pass and from that it was 3-0.”
The Americans, who stormed through the Concacaf qualifiers with double-digit wins against Granada, Puerto Rico and Curaçao, will be among the favourites to go all the way in this tournament, but for India the match was disappointing and deflating at all levels and indicative of what the rest of the tournament will be about: damage limitation.
The top-down approach to building national teams by the AIFF has never worked, and scrambling a team together was bound to end in disappointment. Journalist and long-time observer of the Indian game, Vishnu Prasad noted on Twitter that the “AIFF is like that father who walked out on his kid when it was born, then showed up a week before the 17th birthday and said ‘let’s go to Disneyland and make sure you have a memorable childhood!”
India will play Morocco and Brazil in their two remaining group games and only a miracle will prevent the hosts from crashing out early. Five years ago, India’s boys were delighted to score a goal against Colombia in the first round and it seems that their female counterparts can’t hope for much more.
In the day’s other group A match Brazil edged past Morocco 1-0 through a goal from Jhonson. In Goa, Germany came from behind to win 2-1 against Nigeria while Chile defeated New Zealand 3-1.
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