India Lose 0-3 to Iran in AFC U-16 Championship Qualifiers
India coach Nicolai Adams says his boys committed far too many mistakes and that's why they couldn't carry on their winning form.
India U-16 football team went down 0-3 to hosts Iran in their second match of the AFC U-16 Championship qualifiers here on Friday. (India thrash Bahrain 5-0)
In another match, Bahrain, who had lost 0-5 to India in the inaugural Group E match, beat Lebanon 2-1.
India now stand on three points from two matches and will play Lebanon in their last Group League match on Sunday. Goals from Mohammad Sharaifi (16th), Khodamoradi (43rd) and Ghaderi (57th) helped Iran earn full points.
Congratulating Iran on the victory, head coach Nicolai Adam added with a smile, "We look forward to having a rematch against Iran in the AFC U-16 Finals next year in India."
"With due respect to Iran, we played much stronger teams during the exposure teams in Germany and even won. But to win a game like this you need to play without making mistakes, which we were not able to," he maintained.
"It was in the last 20 minutes that we played Football. The second goal at the stroke of interval killed us. The boys are young and we have time to prepare them for the bigger challenges that stay ahead.
We could not reproduce our good performance which we put up against Bahrain. In my opinion, we lost because we were weak, and not because Iran were strong."