 Hello and welcome. We're coming to you today from the most polluted city in the world. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about football. More specifically, India's upcoming international friendly against Jordan. And discussing this vital, vital issue with me today is a man who you know as the rising star in the star sports presenter's table. I know him as a man who can eat his way out of any situation and the finest midfielder to never have played for India. Mr Arjun Pandit. What's happening buddy? That was a very good introduction. I wasn't expecting that to be understood. The best midfielder part, you had me at best only. Where are you coming from? We're coming from Chinnai where the third T20 international was played between India and the West Indies. And it was a good game because David Silva scored a good goal. And then Maa Siyal got the equalizer but then I was happy because I don't like United that much because we're Arsenal fans. I had no work so I was watching the Manchester Dabi. So, leave Manchester Dabi and talk about your Dabi. See the game against Jordan in first and foremost, I think we should put our hands together for the AIFF that in the space of a month, you've got the Indian team playing two games against really top quality opposition. First came China and now comes Jordan. Give credit where credit is due. Because these are the kind of games you have to play before the Asian Cup. You will get the opposition in the Asian Cup. There's no point playing versus Sri Lanka, Pakistan and so on and so forth. There's no disrespect intended to them. But Jordan in my view will possibly be the closest we will get to playing a team like Bahrain. If you remember 2011 Bahrain when we played against them, they were tall, strong boys, big guys, six feet tall. A majority of them, their average height was about six feet tall and all. So, I'm guessing Jordan is the closest to that. So, it's going to be a very physical encounter. And as opposed to China, it will be interesting to see the way Stephen Constantine sets his team up. Let's be honest that the team exceeded expectations. No one was expecting them to play the way they played against China and it didn't seem like they were shooting in the dark. They had planned for it and they executed his plans beautifully in China versus Jordan now we will have to see. Because in team news, this is what is being heard in reports is that team captain Sunil Chhetri might not be playing this game owing to an injured ankle. Which if the reports are true, then it's a good decision because you'd rather have him fully fit come the first week of Jan as opposed to now versus Jordan. But yeah, so it's been an interesting game. How much of a difference do you think that makes irrespective? Because we had this situation and the reports also indicate that Chhetri's injury is not serious. So hopefully this is just a precautionary measure and nothing more than that because that's a 2011 we were talking about and Baichung wasn't at his, he had the recurring injuries going on. But the minute you saw him come on to the pitch even against, was it the last game against Korea? Yeah, he came off the bench. And like Baichung comes on, boom he came on, full power. But more than him, the transformation that the team went through the minute this guy came on to the pitch suddenly is like there was a new energy and a new sort of sense of purpose about these boys. Suddenly they thought it's possible. Our biggest player has come on the field. So do you think Chhetri is in a very similar position with the current national team? Of course, Chhetri is way ahead of any player in this team and I mean it with the utmost respect for every other player on this team. What Chhetri has done and what Chhetri has done consistently over the years and what Chhetri has been doing over the last two years is not like Chhetri is walking on his name. He was the standout player in the ISL last season, Indian player. He is the standout player for Bengaluru this season as well. He's already got I think four or five goals to his name. The injury was also after he... The injury was also after he scored. He played the full 90 after that and I'm guessing after the 90 they assessed his injury and Bengaluru said look thoda issu hai and I'm guessing they were in contact with the All India Football Federation who of course were in contact with the coach and then if they've taken the decision to rest him then you've got to welcome that decision. Because you'd rather have a fully fit Sunil Chhetri in UAE as opposed to a half fit Sunil Chhetri in the UAE and not have the same situation repeat itself Bhaichung was at the fag end of his career in 2011. He did not recover from his calf but Bhaichung did not have was the professional approach that the ISL teams are giving to their players. They're giving him... And this boy is at his peak now. He's at his peak right now. He's playing like he's... But it's also his last big international tournament. Yeah for sure. I mean we're not going to the World Cup. Yeah. So yeah, I know. But you know what this also means is that since there's no Chhetri it means there's an opportunity for the likes of JJ and Balwant Singh to stand up and be counted. But as they say with goalscorers that in the build up to a game your form defines the kind of... You know the kind of momentum you're carrying into it and momentum for a goalscorer to have that touch to have that feel for a goal is so important. JJ has not had the best of starts to the ISL Balwant has not had the best of starts with ATK in the ISL So my only worry is that where are the goals going to come from? There's not going to be much of a chance. Udanta Singh has not had the best of starts to the ISL No goal, no assist to Udanta so far in Bengaluru FC's campaign The only guy who seems to have had a decent ISL is Holly Charan Naziri But Holly Charan Naziri playing international football is a completely different scenario as opposed to Holly Charan Naziri playing in the ISL Pranoy Haldar is a good midfielder you need someone like that combative midfielder he's shown that in the ISL Raul and Borges man Raul and Borges used to be a mainstay for Stephen Constantine up until about a year and a half back he was probably one of the first few names on that list he's come down the pecking order but he's had a good start to the ISL again last season he was injured so didn't have the best of seasons this time around the Raul in of old has come back in Anirot Thapa his team has not had a good season but Anirot Thapa as we saw in that game was China brings in freshness into that midfield he brings the air of positivity, his ability on the ball so that should be good but the big talking point for me is the defence Anas he is a a two-stopper back Sandesh and Anas of course Anas hasn't featured in the ISL so far so he's practically going into the game versus Jordan with no real game time under his back damn no match sharpness no but he has this sort of connection with Sandesh I suppose the idea is to if he's not the national team coach can have no real say on what his ISL team does he can at least give him game time when he has the chance yeah but you can't say there's not is not going to have an effect or a factor on the way he plays for the national team because if you're playing five games prior to that with the club team then you come to play one game with the national team of course what you do in those five games will have a big impact momentum is huge in football your rhythm everything develops over time now the big question is really do we have when did Anas come back from injury also he hasn't been fully fit for yeah he hasn't been fully fit for a while he didn't start the ISL he had an injury yeah I think it's been a while since he's come back to full fitness actually but the big question really is do we have a reserve pool right this close to the Asian Cup do we have a reserve pool of getting in new players and saying okay maybe these guys are not in full form for their club teams should we get players are doing well for their club teams and bring them into the national team and my answer is no you don't you're practically two games away from the Asian Cup you've got your 30 man squad ready you can not bring in new players now which means if a Suasai Raj is doing really well for Jamshedpur FC I'm sorry but he just does not fit the scheme of things now it's too late now you can't do it now if this was six months then maybe you could have said okay Suasai Raj if Suasai Raj was playing the ISL last season and he performed the way he was performing for Jamshedpur then yeah probably you would have seen him in the 30 man squad but because he was playing the I-League last season then you had to see him step up and see whether he could do it in the ISL and now that he's doing it but it's too late here it's just a timing and issue I think so I don't think you can bring in new players yeah this I mean like so we can of course a separate discussion is on whether the ISL is actually a step up or not I think like if you see the quality of a player especially a young player 22-23 year old player who is playing the way he was consistently over the course of a season against big teams, small teams all kinds of teams like Suasai Raj is last season I think there's enough there for a coach to say okay why not give this guy a shot see what happens next season next season so anyway but what's what's done is done what you're saying is basically team Paki team Paki is done now there are only 18 or 20 boys in the squad for the Asian Cup now you just have to pick and choose who is my best player in form right now and I think in his mind he's only chosen his 18-20 man squad he's just going with 30 because you get the option to bring these boys and you can of course see them in practice and it keeps the others on their toes as well so it works that way to your other the other league point my thing is just that I think neither or no league competition no club competition in India is of the standard where like you can really take those performances into serious consideration when it comes to the national team playing like the Asian Cup agreed agreed so it's pretty much like the coach has no choice but to go with what he thinks is will be the best 11 he can put out that's fair enough but the thing is see whether or not you agree with me if the ISL is the best quality of football in the country even if you're not Stephen Connolly you're any coach you're going to choose from that talent pool that you have playing in the highest but the sort of the competitive fixtures for them to prove that they are good enough to play at the higher level I mean like you're saying if I were the coach, if you were the coach you'd go with the guys who you trust and who you've built into some kind of a unit and the unit has been performing for a while now so that trust factor is there it's not like stopgap, stopgap sometimes you're losing sometimes you're winning sometimes you're losing they put together a good run of wins and after that performance versus China it's kind of validated a bit as well so now will the same thing happen versus Jordan? I don't know because Jordan could be a completely different approach and if you go on to the field without Sunil Chhetri by the way are you going to break the news to us first? is transport showing the game? is that already decided? last time it was like a last-minute decision that 3 billion potential sort of audience match it's time to show it are you showing it too? next question sorry, go on no, but no my point was just that I think it'll be a real test for us to see how we do without Sunil Chhetri I think that is the big, big talking point and how this team manages without Sunil Chhetri someone like JJ steps up because JJ's full-scoring form has been on the vein for a while now it's been from last season of the ISL and it's carried on into this season as well and especially when you have Chhetri in the form that he is you can still sit back and say okay, I can be provider you know I can provide I can play in that triangle for Udanta, Chhetri and JJ but if Chhetri is not there now Balwant will come so Balwant, JJ and Udanta how will the combination go? we'll have to see that because all this while we have not taken into account what if something happens to Sunil Chhetri it's been 34 years and I mean it why are we jinxing? I'm not jinxing I'm a touch wood I hope nothing happens man we know him personally also great guy, great player but what if something happens to Sunil Chhetri then what will you do? then are you depleted completely? are you depleted completely going forward? we'll see I mean I definitely think it makes a massive difference he is the best player but he has that Baichun effect like you said he has an effect on his team mates more than his ability on the ball his brain is fully there he's always I mean his work rate is phenomenal there's literally nothing about the guy that is that takes away from this Indian team but that said I think with nothing to lose also a guy like Balwant whenever he's gotten a chance for the national team he's gone and done something he's gone and done something so what do you know Mahade 35 yard cracker it's going to be fun yeah but I'm just saying that he has very little probability because the striker the striker runs on his momentum now if both of your top strikers within the first few games of the ISL I think 5 or 6 games they haven't done much and you define a striker of course you look at the striker and you see his work rate and you see how he's combining with the team and all but the ultimate definition of a striker is through the amount of goals he's scoring and both of them have not been scoring too many goals agree agree so that's an issue yeah it's like my take is just that in this case for these guys like the playing for the national team a lot of things change yeah overall like the cohesiveness of the team the quality of players in every position I mean in a small pool of players the national team here represents overall much higher standard like these 30 boys if you were to make a club side out of them and play against even the foreign players who are currently playing in India I think they would do alright so it's safe to say that given that situation and improvement in performance of course you have to also consider the fact that the opposition is far superior so it could be that these defenders and I frankly I don't know Jordan so well that I can comment on whether against those specific defenders whether Balwant or any of these guys actually have any chance at all yeah so but you brought up Jordan just for the people who are watching what is the team made up of how many European players how many players from the local league there's one young player a guy called Moussa Al-Tamari Moussa Al-Tamari yeah he's 21 years old and he's playing at Apoel, Nicosia and Cyprus which is a club it's a reasonably big club Apoel I think plays so I guess he's the biggest talent the rest of them are mainly from two clubs Al Faisali and Al Vedat between the two of them they've almost won like 50 league titles domestically so most of the players are from these two big clubs the Dabi of Jordan clubs also I think Jordan their last game was versus world cup finalist Croatia 2-1 they lost but since we keep focusing on the last game I think it's very important to focus on what they've done over a long period of time so over the last 10 games they've played three European opposition so they've played Croatia they've played Cyprus and they've played Denmark and this is not the one game, two games it's come over a period of 10 games in between they've played Asian opposition so you're playing a squad which is well oiled and which is sorted seasoned squad so I think this is going to be a obviously they are planning for like I guess they are looking at the Asian cup as a maybe potentially winnable competition or looking to get to the last stages maybe so their preparation has to be but I don't get it I'm going to ask you what do you think China would have been a tougher test or Jordan is going to be a tougher test and don't take into account what we did in China I'm just saying on paper if you would have been seeing that India is going to China to play China and then to Aman to play Jordan which for you would have been a tougher test both tough games I don't know how we can compare but like the Chinese men's team hasn't done anywhere close to as well as the Chinese women's team has done and somehow because of the I guess the positivity there is a positivity associated with how the national team is doing right now right not too many defeats it's a there's a belief I think that against most opposition they can put in a good effort whatever happens China also I mean they cracked the bar a couple of times it's a game we should have lost we might have lost on another day this will be a similarly tough situation I think there's going to be a tougher test I think planning needs to be improved you thought the plan was well executed I thought like to the best of our abilities yeah perhaps to the best of our abilities that's what I'm saying you can't execute a plan over 90 minutes but you can execute it for say 60 minutes for patches of 15 minutes football is the same sometimes you have momentum of 5 minutes sometimes they have momentum of 5 minutes it's what you do when you have momentum on your side or when your backs are against the wall that's what counts everyone knows how to trap the ball everyone knows if it goes in I will overlap we also do that it doesn't mean that we can execute in a match situation it's a completely different scenario so that's that and then after this is one game definitely like I'm sure the crowd in Aman will be like really pumped up yeah I think everyone knows now it's pretty close to the competition it's going to be a fun game definitely should be a good game I'm looking forward to it so for you the couple of Indian guys that you will be watching particularly and hoping that they fit into the system for the betrayal of Balwan, J.J. and Udanta how they function without Sunil Chhetri that for me I'm going to have a keen eye on the defense just not because something new is happening but just how they can continue that consistency that they've been showing at the international level and like in the last game versus China I saw it was not hard badaane wali defending you know ki ball aaghi uradia main a bangladesh yam aadia main a shillanka it was you know Sandesh was coming into his own he was taking over the player one on one situations he was sometimes getting better of the Chinese players and all so it remains to be seen if they can do the same versus a physical physically strong Jordanian side different strengths different and of course with the kind of performances he's been giving over the past couple of years you've come to expect a certain kind of performance from him so you'd hope that Gurpreet continues doing what he does and really it's just I want to see the kind of tactics they imply a man is it going to be the same thing of baal mili counter pehbhagav 1 2 3 touches triangle peh and move forward because mind you Jordan would have seen video of the game versus China right Jordan would have seen video of the game versus China and China did not have the benefit of seeing a game that India played versus tough opposition like them and to see the kind of opportunities and the kind of tactics they employed so if anything I think Jordan will be prepared for that and if that happens what sort of a pragmatic approach does the coach use during the game and does he have you know the bandwidth does he have the kind of players with the tactical know how to change their system during a game that is what I'm going to be looking at here of course goal but I don't know I think the goal seems a little bit difficult hmm it seems a little bit difficult like our white hair from here it's going to be difficult I think the goal seems a little bit difficult and on this scientific note on this scientific note put on the dial put on the dial at least one camera person who is going to sleep we'll take that as a pointer and wrap up this discussion we'll we'll do it again and the next time we'll be talking about the tournament the atmosphere of a major tournament hopefully Mr. Pandit will join us again we're not reviewing the game we'll review the game but let's see how it goes first if it's a 7-0 type scene then let's skip the review okay don't think it's happening with 7-0 man I mean that's that's negativity right there for you yeah I don't think it's happening either I don't think it's happening either I think it'll be oh let's go prediction score prediction I have forced people all my life to predict because the nature of our job is that journalists sir prediction it's the most stupid question ever on the planet I feel sorry but since you're asking me for a prediction I'll say stupid is a stupid does yeah I'll say it's a Jordanian win I can't give you a score man I don't know I think Jordan's going to win this but I'm not bothered about the result like I said after China also I'm just bothered about the way we play and what we do yeah sir prediction sir I think it would be great sir if we could get a goal I think it'll be a massive boost that's a the rest it's going to go on the weaknesses will remain over the course of 2-3 games it won't change but if we get a goal at least we'll get a little confidence I think it'll be a step forward I think one more thing I remember we got a chance to play a little bit there because in the ISL also I was seeing a couple of games of Delhi Dynamos yeah that boy looks transformed there and transformed not because his game has changed there's a certain amount of self-belief that has come into himself that he knows that I can take on players physically he's really worked on himself you can make out he's buffed up a little bit he's become a little broad and he moves well with the ball I think maybe I'm not saying Chante should be starting for you Follicharan Naziri has been your main guy then you start with him but give him 10 minutes give him 15 minutes 20 minutes and let's see what Chante can do because if he's a part of your 30 man squad then he deserves to be given a chance he's even doing so in the club yeah let's see what he's got alright Mr. Konstantin it's on you now sir yes sir we'll be watching thanks for joining us we'll see you again I don't think he'll be watching