⚽️ HT Kick Off: All set for the AFC Women’s Asian CupIndia are among the dozen that will play to win as well as stay in contention for next year’s World Cup and the LA Games, writes Dhiman in this issue
Almost three years after successfully hosting a World Cup, the spotlight will be back on Australia, this time for Asia. Beginning Sunday and for the next 20 days, the AFC Women’s Asian Cup will be played in Perth, Sydney and Gold Coast. Twelve teams, 27 matches to decide the Asian champions and who will stay in the fray for the 2027 World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Thanks for reading Kick Off! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
A last and a firstIt could be the last chance for Australia’s golden generation led by Sam Kerr to win something at home. “We really don’t have another World Cup in us,” Katrina Gorry had said after Australia’s 1-3 defeat to England in the semi-final of the 2023 World Cup. And it could be the first chance for India to show that, having got to the high table on merit, they belong at this level. Anju Tamang’s injury is a big blow and Manisha Kalyan reached Perth on Thursday after her new club in Peru released her only after the international break began. That meant Kalyan missed most of the training in Turkiye and Australia where India arrived first on February 11. But the squad has a good blend of youth and experience. Seven players who were part of the 2022 edition where India were scratched following an outbreak of Covid-19 are in Australia as are six debutants. “India made history and qualified. It is the kind of thing that can change soccer,” Amelia Valverde, the new head coach, told Hindustan Times last month. Read interview here. Taken together with India making the under-17 and the under-20 Asian women’s finals in 2026, this could indeed mark a significant shift for a country that was once taken off the rankings grid for not playing enough. Valverde, a Costa Rican with experience of taking her country to the World Cup and among the three women coaches in this competition along with Iran’s Marziyeh Jafari and Katarina Kalbyte of Uzbekistan, also spoke of having “the ingredients for a perfect recipe.” We can gauge the accuracy of that statement on March 4 when India open against Vietnam who made the quarter-finals in 2022 and then the World Cup. Vietnam have been part of every finals since 1999. Japan, two-time champions and semi-finalists in 15 of 17 times they have participated in the competition that began as the Asian Cup Ladies Football Tournament in 1975, are up next. Ranked eighth in the world, the former world champions have 16 players based in England. Skipper Yui Hasegawa is with Manchester City where Nils Nielsen, the first foreigner to be named head coach of the national team, has worked and Hinata Miyazawa plays for Manchester United. Nielsen has said his team are fun to watch but because they are not physically dominating, they can be beaten “if you have the right set-up.”
Our time has come: BasforeRanked 67th – only Iran and Bangladesh are lower in FIFA’s list – India will play Chinese Taipei on March 10. If they reach the quarter-finals, they will contend for Brazil and LA. “From the start of the Asian Cup qualifiers last year, the whole team have had one thought, which is to qualify for the World Cup,” said Sangita Basfore, whose brace against Thailand got India to Australia. “Our time has come, and our first match is on March 4, so all our focus is on that. If we win that, our confidence will grow…Everyone in the team is clear about taking it game by game.” Read full story here. The top six (semi-finalists and winners of the matches between losing quarter-finalists) qualify for the 2027 World Cup. Teams that lose the play-offs will be in the inter-continental play-offs later this year. The quarter-finalists will also be in contention for berths from Asia to the 2028 Olympics. The first match is between Australia and Philippines which the former won 4-0 in 2022. Australia were knocked out by South Korea who have qualified for every edition since 1991 but are yet to win this. Including Casey Phair, their first multi-racial player in a World Cup, South Korea’s squad has eight overseas players. In 2022, South Korea lost in the final to China. The nine-time winners and defending champions have appointed former Australia coach Ante Milicic this time. The last time Australia won it, in 2010, was also the last time North Korea were among the Asian elite. But the three-time champions are the reigning under-17 and under-20 world and Asian champions which shows that the sport is on a strong foundation. The presence of Iran and Bangladesh in the Asian Cup is proof of women’s football surviving tremendous political and social turbulence. That of North Korea is how sustained investment in women’s football can help a country come out of isolation, if only for a few days. Play of the week
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In other newsAIFF-ISL clubs exchange letters: One day before FC Goa hosted Sporting Club Delhi in the third round of ISL12, AIFF wrote to the clubs seeking their opinion on Churchill Brothers’s participation in the men’s top tier. If asking clubs to share their views on a new entrant after 13 of the 91 matches had been played was bizarre, AIFF doing it five days after Churchill Brothers wrote seeking an update was even more so. And guess what? No one is sure for which season Churchill were seeking to be included. The clubs have replied saying such an inclusion would be untenable and said that the idea should be dropped. Heavy fines on Chelsea, West Ham: Chelsea and West Ham United have been fined £325,000 and £300,000 respectively for the mass confrontation at the end of their Premier League game last month, the Football Association said on Wednesday. Chelsea battled from two goals down to beat West Ham 3-2 in the London derby on January 31 but nearly 20 players were involved in a melee at the end of the game. West Ham winger Adama Traore threw Marc Cucurella to the ground before he clashed with Joao Pedro as other players arrived to break up the fight. West Ham’s Jean-Clair Todibo received a straight red card after a VAR review for clutching Pedro’s throat.
Czech mate ends retirement: Former captain Vladimír Darida has agreed to come out of international retirement to help the Czech Republic try and qualify for the World Cup, reports AP. The 35-year-old Darida retired from internationals in 2021 after the Czechs were eliminated in the quarter-finals of the European Championship. The playmaker agreed to rejoin the team after he was approached by coach Miroslav Koubek and Czech Football Association general manager Pavel Nedved. Darida said on Tuesday his decision was not about his personal ambitions but about “doing together the maximum to return Czech football to the World Cup.” The Czechs last appeared in the World Cup in 2006. Advocaat steps down: Dick Advocaat has resigned as Curaçao head coach due to his daughter’s health issues and won’t lead the team at the World Cup, reports AP. The 78-year-old Dutchman was set to lead the Caribbean country into an opener against four-time champion Germany in June. “I’ve always said that family comes before football,” Advocaat said in a statement released Monday by the country’s soccer federation. “This is therefore a natural decision. But that doesn’t change the fact that I will miss Curaçao, the people there, and my colleagues very much. I consider qualifying the smallest country in the world for the World Cup one of the highlights of my career.” Kilts okay: Scotland supporters can wear their kilts in all their customary glory at the World Cup. The Scottish Football Association told AP on Wednesday that it had reached agreement with FIFA for sporrans – the traditional fur or leather pouch worn in front of the kilt – to be permitted at games despite contravening security limits for entry into stadiums in the USA, which is co-hosting the June 11-July 19 tournament with Canada and Mexico. Scotland have been drawn in Group C with Brazil, Morocco and Haiti with two games in Boston and one in Miami. FIFA boss “very reassured”: FIFA boss Gianni Infantino told AFP on Tuesday he was “very reassured” about Mexico’s hosting of games in the football World Cup, in his first comments on the violence triggered by the killing of a drug cartel leader. “Very reassured, everything’s good. It’s going to be spectacular,” Infantino said in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, two days after cartel members went on a rampage -- including in host city Guadalajara -- over the army’s killing of their leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera. However, Infantino’s optimism was not shared by the Portuguese Football Federation, which cast doubt on whether their team would play a friendly on March 29 in Mexico City. Bad Bunny and Pele: A jacket worn by Pelé in the 1966 World Cup has become a hit among fans of pop singer Bad Bunny since he borrowed it from a collector’s sports merchandise store and used it in his recent concerts in Sao Paulo, in his first performances on Brazilian soil, reports AP. Bad Bunny’s tribute to the three-time World Cup winner, who died in 2022 at age 82, also included a change in the lyrics of the song MONACO, sung by the Puerto Rican artist as “scoring a goal after Pelé and Maradona” instead of “Messi and Maradona.”
Saiss retires: Morocco captain Romain Saiss, 35, announced on Tuesday his retirement from international football, bringing to a close what he called “the most beautiful chapter of my life”. AFP says Saiss’s decision comes after repeated injuries, including in the last Africa Cup of Nations, where he only played 18 minutes in the opening match against Comoros before he was substituted due to an issue with his left thigh. Hakimi on trial for rape: Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi will face trial for rape, the defender, who plays for Paris St Germain and the Moroccan national squad, said in a social media post on Tuesday. He denies the allegation. “Today, a rape accusation is enough to justify a trial, even though I deny it and everything proves it’s false,” Hakimi said in a post on X, reports AFP. “This is as unjust to the innocent as it is to the genuine victims. I calmly await this trial, which will allow the truth to come out publicly.”
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Iconic MomentBodo/Glimt stun Inter
Norway's Bodo/Glimt pulled off one of the most remarkable results in modern Champions League history on Tuesday, beating last season's runners-up and Serie A leaders Inter Milan 2-1 at San Siro to reach the last 16 with a 5-2 aggregate triumph. Bodo/Glimt, the modest outfit from north of the Arctic Circle, scored through Jens Petter Hauge and Hakon Evjen before Alessandro Bastoni pulled one back. Bodo/Glimt, who had won four Norwegian Eliteserien titles in five years, are the first side from Norway to go so far in Europe's elite club competition since Rosenborg reached the quarter-finals in 1997. On Tuesday, there were 20,000 more people in the stadium than live in Bodo. Also read🔗 CFG leaving is a big blow for Indian football. 🔗 Leagues with digital focus score high. They said it
That’s all for this week. As always, I look forward to your feedback. You can either write to me at dhiman@htlive.com, or reply to this mail. Edited and produced by Shad Hasnain.Thanks for reading Kick Off! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
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