India in third round of Asia Cup after drawing draw with Afghanistan

The Indian football team ended its campaign in third place after playing out a 1-1 draw in Group E of the combined qualifiers of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asia Cup China 2023 against Afghanistan here.
India finished third with seven points from eight matches with one win, four draws and three losses. Thanks to this, he went straight to the third round of the qualifiers for the AFC Asia Cup China 2023. In the match played against Afghanistan, India first took a 1-0 lead and it was due to the mistake of Afghanistan goalkeeper Owas Azizi. In fact, in the 75th minute of the match, Owais Ajizi himself scored from his own goalpost, although after this Afghanistan leveled 1-1 in the 82nd minute thanks to a brilliant goal from their young player Hossein Zamani.

Looking at the match, Afghanistan made an aggressive start in the second half after the first half was tied without a goal. In the 57th minute of the match, goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu made a good defense to prevent Afghanistan from taking the lead. Sunil Chhetri, who scored two goals against Bangladesh, could not show a charismatic game in this match and was called out in the 69th minute of the match.

India’s head coach Igor Stimac made two changes to the team for this match. Bipin Singh and Udanta Singh, who played in the last match against Bangladesh, were dropped and Rahul Bheke and Ashiq Kuruniyan joined the team in their place.