 So, India started as a 4-5-1, that's the way I saw it. You could also call it a 4-3-2-1 depending on how you look at these things. And the court started with Amrindar Singh, not Gurpreet Singh. And you can understand that because Amrindar was part of a championship winning side with his team in the ISL. Up front, captain was Sandesh Jhingan, stopper back, partnering with him was Sana Singh, debutante, Akash Mishra as left wing back, Ashutosh as right wing back. So, three debutante in your four defenders that started versus Oman. Up front, in front of them, the five-man midfield, you had Raolyn Borges, the experienced man. Ahead of him was a duo of Jackson Singh and Suresh Singh Boingjam. On the left was Ashutosh Karunian, good to see him on the field after a long time. And on the right was the man with the coloured hair, Bipin Singh. And up front, as the lone striker was Manbir Singh. On the other side, when you look at Oman, they had a pretty simple setup. It was a 4-4-2, however, when they had the ball and they saw lots and lots of the ball in the first half. Their setup was completely different because that 4-4-2 in turn turned into a 4-2-4. How? I'll just show you. Because if you have the two strikers and they love playing between the lines, these guys just operate between the lines. No one sticks into one position. You had one man who was always there as the central midfielder, who would turn into a back three sometimes and he would help out with the back three. The one with him was always playing in front of him. And you had four over here and you had the full backs moving their way, depending on whichever side of the ball was. So this is how they were attacking the Indian team. A 4-2-4. If you look at the first half, Oman was clearly the team that was dominating the Indian side. Lots of possession, though they didn't have much to show in terms of shots and target. But lots and lots of possession. And a big part of that was the way their players were interchanging positions. I'll just show you how they were doing it. They would generally create triangles on either side of the pitch. If it was on the left-hand side, the ball was there. Triangles would be created, overloaded the Indian defence and then try getting an outlet to put a cross in for someone to come in and tap that ball in. Here is how they were working. So the strikers were generally pre-operating between the lines. I showed this in the earlier formation bit as well, that this one is the man who's always here in front of the defence. The one in front of him in that 4-4-2 with him in the middle was always given free way to operate. And free way to operate how? Not just in this area. He could sometimes move outside. If he would move outside then one person would come in here. I mean they were given free will to move as much as they want. If the fullback came in then he could move out. And this causes problem for whichever team you're playing against. It is really difficult to start playing, you know, if players are constantly changing positions with ease and you saw that with the Omani team. So how they would create overloads is this man would come here. The striker would come here. The midfielder would come here. The fullback would come here and like this a triangle is made. This man will be bombing in, this man will be bombing in. The triangle is made. One of these guys is moving out and you saw moves where one of these guys is moving out to the wing or he's moving out to the wing for an outlet to find someone in the box. If you saw in the 17th minute, this was exactly how they played in the 17th minute and I thought it was really nice because the fullback, unlike normal fullback runs, he moved inside and he came out, right? So how he did that was, you see this, in the 17th minute the ball was here. The fullback came. The midfielder who was here with Omani has moved here. This man came here. This man came inside, right? So the fullback played here. This man was staying here. He played in the ball here. The Indian defenders were here and instead he played in the ball back to this side. Generally you'd see a fullback making a run from here on the line, but instead he made a run from here. So the ball was played by the fullback here. Then this ball was played out wide and continuing his run, the ball was played in momentum to the man here and you had one, you had two players inside. The ball was played inside for the Omani player. Luckily he had a bad touch from an Indian perspective and that ball did not result in a goal for India. You talk about that first half and there was not much on offer as far as the Indian attack is concerned. I think possibly just that one attack that came around the 19th minute from the Indian left flank. So if he got a team I had to look back and say that did we have anything going forward? Possibly that one move that resulted in Akash Mishra getting the ball. Nothing came off it, but that's a positive saying that this is the way India needs to be playing at the international level. So what happened was Oman had the ball on the right side and they are very close. They try keeping the field very close. So whichever side of the ball, the half the ball is. They're all swarming around that place, keeping it very close and they can play quick passes, small passes and this is the way they generally function. Manbir was up front. You had the two midfielders here, Raulin and Jackson over here. You had Bipin Singh. Ashik was around this side. There's Akash was here, the two stopper backs and Ashutosh here. India won the ball in this part of the field. Ball was played out to Jackson Singh. Jackson Singh instead and there were attackers here. So Jackson Singh found Ashutosh on the right. Ashutosh once he had the ball, Sandesh gave him space and Sandesh then hit a classical diagonal ball. Stoppers, classical diagonal ball. Inch perfect and it was really well taken down by Ashik as well. Ashik was really impressive in that game versus Oman. Took it down even though he had a marker on him. Took some time, waited for the fullback to come and Akash Mishra had an empty space. Put the ball over here. There was a player with him, but he had of course, he had a few yards ahead of the defender. Put the ball inside and the ball went straight to the stopper back but this was possibly the one loan chance you saw the Indians creating as far as the attack in the first half was concerned. The first goal of the game came in the 43rd minute of the first half. Oman going up one nil and while you might say it was an own goal by Amarinder Singh or Sana Singh, it was an attack by the Indians on the right side that resulted in the Indian defense being opened up and thus leading to that move, leading to that first goal. How did that happen was because if you look at India's attack in the first 45, they lacked imagination on all parts of the pitch. So this is what happened. Manbir was up front doing the loan man's job. You had Jackson and Suresh right here. Rowland was here. You had Bippin who had moved up. India had the ball and the ball was played out to Ashutosh and Ashutosh then Jackson moved up to help him out. There was a player here. There was another player here. And Ashutosh played the ball to Jackson asking for a one-two. The ball was played out to Ashutosh from a one-two but there were just too many Omani players around them and this is what I'm talking about the lack of imagination. There was no one around him. He did not know what to do after that so he tried moving on. The Omani player won the ball over here and they won the ball in transition. In transition means the Indian team is broken away from their formation and they only had these many players to take on. These guys then broke because this is what they do. They break and break next speed. They all moved up front. The ball came. One of the players moved here. You had Sanna, you had Sandesh. You had Rowland coming back. Suresh was running back and he was doing quite a job in the first 45, right? And these boys were moving up. They were moving in numbers and the ball was moving in, right? So the ball was played in here. Again, a triangle like I mentioned in the beginning. Triangle was played. The ball was played out to the Omani player on the left wing. You had the two defenders. You had the goalkeeper. Now, I'll tell you why there was a known goal. It was because Amrinder saw there was one, two. They were close to three players attacking the box and this is the quality of this Omani side. Even though they won the ball in transition, all of them moved so quickly towards the attacking half. Who was the attacking goal? That this is why Amrinder probably thought there are two players coming in behind him. There is Sanna over here. Miscommunication. Amrinder mishandles the ball. Touches Sanna and that's the first goal for Omani. You could call the game versus Omani as a game of two halves and why I say that is because the Indian team you saw out in the first 45 was completely different from the Indian team you saw in the second 45 and the only difference here being intent and two players brought that intent and once you saw that intent in those two players, it transferred on to all the 11 players on the pitch. Those two players being Apuya who came in for Raul and Borges and also Rainier Fernandez who had come in for Jackson Singh and you could make her at halftime that course, Srimatch had told them that they need to put the Omani players under pressure when they have the ball. And the first half of what was happening was while they were closing them down, they were not really putting them under pressure. This time they were going a step further, tackling them, troubling them and that pressure led to the first goal that India scored the equalizer in the 55th minute. So in terms of what the pressure was, I'll just tell you before we head to the goal. So whenever Oman would have the ball, they would, these guys move up, these will move in, these will move in, this like this and this was the man who was orchestrating all the Omani moves. So in the first half, while we had players who were coming around them, but no one was close enough to really trouble them because you were also worrying what's going to happen at the back. You don't want to lose numbers at the back and thus Oman could get free space to attack the Indian goal. In the second half, you had one of either Rainier or Suresh Shring mainjam going on to this guy. As soon as he had the ball, one of the players were coming on them, putting him under pressure. One of these players was coming here, someone was coming here, someone was coming here and you had pressure on each and every Omani player. You could see that the intent was there and that led to the first Indian goal. The Indian equalizer came 10 minutes into the second half, 55th minute and it was a result of the pressure that the Indian team put on Oman in the first 10 minutes of the second 45, right? So what happened was because of the pressure, here was guys putting pressure on the Omani players with the ball. That ball had made their way back to the Oman players. Again, pressure was put up. Ashi Kurunian, everyone was putting pressure from their side, making sure that no one was getting free space and time to run with the ball and the ball was played back to the Omani goalkeeper. Bipin Singh moved up and so the goalkeeper decided to play a long ball because here was the empty man for Oman on the right flank. But as soon as he played the ball, there was good anticipation from Ashutosh who came in, didn't have the best of games but this was probably his best moment in the entire game. Won the ball, took the ball ahead. You saw the Omani players coming in and then was smart enough to cut it back to Bipin Singh and Bipin Singh, credit to him because he's been doing it throughout the ISL, took the ball, didn't take too much time on the ball and tried finding Manveer Singh. Who made a brilliant run by the way because there were two defenders still in the box. Manveer was the only Indian player in the box. Made the run, went behind two defenders. The ball was inch perfect and credit to Manveer Singh. This was possibly the only time in the 90 minutes when he was got a chance to testing the Omani goalkeeper. So what happens is that when you see the 90 minutes you don't get too many chances. What happens is that sometimes when you get that one chance, you're not ready. But this time, when he got that one chance, it was a perfect header. This was textbook header. Ball came in, headed it down, bounced and went right into the top right corner for the Omani goal. And Manveer Singh there, getting the equaliser for India and you have to give credit to the Indian team for the way they played. So many debutants on the field. I think a total of seven to 10 debutants that made their way for the Indian team and credit to the entire team for the way they played versus Oman because this was a team that was beating India regularly at the international level and India pulled off a 1-1 draw. So there were a game of two halves. First 45 left lot to be desired. The second 45 tells you that there's lots to expect from from this Indian team going forward.