Terming his India managerial debut as “a boring match”, Manolo Marquez did not have too much to be excited about his team’s goalless draw against Mauritius at the GMC Balayogi Athletic Stadium here on Tuesday.
However, the Spaniard did not forget to mention the positives and praised the centre-back pairing of Chinglensana Singh and Rahul Bheke, saying the duo played an important role in keeping a clean sheet against the Mauritians.
“I missed out on the last one year. Now, coming back, I am pairing with Rahul Bheke and training together. We play for the same club, Bengaluru FC and train together day in and day out,” Chinglensana said, adding that communicating with Bheke is an organic process for him and managing the backline becomes easier for him when they play together.
Chinglensana Singh’s international career has been shaky. After making his international debut against Oman in 2021, he featured for the Blue Tigers eight times that year. In the following year, he played just two and in 2023, he donned the national jersey just once. After a lengthy injury gap, he is back in the national team setup and is raring to rekindle his partnership with Manolo for the first time since their Hyderabad FC days.
“It helps to understand his system and how he wants us to play. As a centre-back, it is important to organise the team as well. This is a new team, with lots of young boys. So, we all have to understand the system. Once we adapt to that, everything will come naturally,” the 27-year-old defender said at India’s training session ahead of its clash against Syria on September 9.
Largely tipped to win its opening match against Mauritius, it was a frustrating day at the office for Chinglensana and Co. after they were held to a goalless draw. However, the Indian defender, also known as Sana, cited limited time together as the main reason behind India’s blunt performance against the Mauritians.
“We assembled here on September 1 and started training. So we had just a couple of training sessions before the game. Even if we have a lot of good players in the country, it is not easy to understand each other, play the game and start scoring. We tried our best. It is a process, and it will take time. We will work on training and keep improving, and eventually, when it clicks, it will be beautiful, and we’ll start winning more matches,” Sana said.
India will next play Syria in the Intercontinental Cup. Placed 93rd in the official FIFA rankings, Syria is placed significantly higher than India (124). The two teams last clashed in the AFC Asian Cup earlier this year when both were placed in Group B. In that match, Syria beat the Blue Tigers 1-0 courtesy of a 76th-minute strike by Omar Khirbin.
Given how rusty India is as a team at the moment and judging by its lack of cohesiveness, visible against Mauritius, the Blue Tigers will have a mountain to climb if they want a positive result against the Syrians.
When asked if there is a mental block in the team regarding facing Syria, the Manipur-born player said that the team keeps communicating to tackle any pre-match nervousness. He also believes that once Manolo’s process clicks over time, India will not need to worry about any team separately and play every match with the sole intention of winning.
“Our preparations will be focusing on ourselves - how each can do better. This includes all 25 of us that are here. We need to understand the coach’s system and his style of play and execute that in the games with more confidence. Once we start doing what we should as a team, we don’t need to worry about who we are playing against, and everything will start clicking,” he said.
“We want to win every game we play, but that did not happen yesterday [against Mauritius]. It is not an excuse, but it has just been two days, and in football, it takes a lot of time for the team to start understanding each other, to understand the system and the combination as well. There were a lot of positives as well. We kept the ball and dominated possession. Once we start scoring and finishing our chances, things will fall into place,” concluded Chinglensana.
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