Don't expect much from Nepal at the SAFF Cup
By Biplav Gautam
(January 2003)
The
2003 SAFF Cup in Dhaka, Bangladesh will serve as a valuable measuring stick
to see where exactly Nepal’s national team is on their road to recovery.
The turmoil within ANFA has crippled football in
Nepal for the past few years and it is anyone’s guess what the actual status
of the national team might be. The emergence of Nirajan Rayamajhi and Nepal’s
drubbing of Macao at the World Cup qualifiers might suggest that our kickers
are not quite in the tailspin that the general public believes them to be in. But
then again, the poor performances of star Nepali players in the Bangladeshi
leagues and the dismal results of quasi national sides that have
underperformed in regional tournaments, leads one to believe that indeed Nepal
has a long ways to go to recapture the magic of Dhaka ’93 when we won the Gold
medal at the SAF Games.
One thing for sure is that no team will be
lacking confidence in Bangladesh. The SAFF Cup has traditionally been a level
playing field for all the teams in South Asia and usually everyone goes into
it feeling like they have a shot to win.
This tournament will reveal a lot about the
progress of the various SAFF nations. Has India reached the next level of
Asian football as their impressive recent results under former Nepali boss
Stephen Constantine might suggest? Are the tremendous resources that the
Maldives government has provided its football association paying dividends? Is
Pakistani football still in a state of freefall? Are Afghanistan footballers
closer to their Arab neighbors or their Desi counterparts? How badly has the
ANFA debacle affected Nepal's national team?
Objectively, it is hard to make a case for Nepal
doing much at the SAFF Cup. First of all, they will most likely be battling
for second place as Bangladesh will be the heavy favorites to win their group.
If Nepal manages to qualify for the next round, then the likely opponents will
be India – a sure loss.
The fact that Nepal organized a last minute
training camp and has not played any practice matches pretty much confirms
that this is a team that already has its epitaph written out. One positive
however, is the fact that the team has some new faces like Nabin Neupane,
Sagar Thapa and Surendra Tamang, which not only is a good sign for the future
of Nepali football, but also hints that team selection was done on merit and
not on politics.
Nepal’s Korean coach, Yo Ki Hong, is a novice to
the South Asian game and it remains to be seen whether he can develop tactics
that are suitable for the regional tournament. Formations, player selection,
and tactics are too difficult to predict with so many variables and so much
uncertainty heading into the tournament. One thing for sure, the Khadka –
Rayamajhi partnership will have to produce a lot of goals as Nepal’s defense
and goalkeeping have long been an Achilles heel.
In the end, the SAFF Cup will most likely be a
celebration of Nepal’s new beginning in the football world after years of
despair brought about by the ANFA feud. Hopefully it will be the stepping
stone to new frontiers in the international football arena. What will be most
important is not how Nepal does at the SAFF Cup, but what Nepal does to
improve its football standards after the SAFF Cup.
My predictions: Nepal bows out in the first round
and Afghanistan defeats India to take the title!
