The Indian senior women’s team will play two international friendlies against Nepal as it continues its preparations for the Asian qualifiers ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The matches are set to be played on February 15 and 18 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here, Seeni Mohideen, the chairman of Tamil Nadu Football Associaton Women’s Committee, told Sportstar on Monday.
The Blue Tigresses have been drawn alongside Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan in Group G of the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament 2024 Asian Qualifiers Round 1, with matches to be played in a one-round league format in a centralised venue from April 3 to 11, 2023.
“We need to maintain the standard of the Indian team and keep playing the style of football that we want to,” Thomas Dennerby, India’s coach told AIFF, “Personally, it would be a huge disappointment to me if we fail to handle the situations when we play teams like Kyrgyz Republic and Turkmenistan.
So hopefully, we will come out of the first round with a good result and then move forward to the second. We should win the group.”
The seven group winners will advance to Round 2 where they will be joined by the five highest-seeded teams - DPR Korea, Japan, Australia, China PR and South Korea.
Four teams from Round 2 - the three group winners and the best-ranked runners-up - will then face off in Round 3 where they will play two pairs of home and away matches with the eventual winners qualifying for the Paris 2024 Women’s Olympic Football Tournament.
“Olympic Qualifiers are such an important tournament and having missed out on the opportunity in the Asian Cup, I think it is very good to have everybody together now. It will bring lots of confidence to the table,” Indian full-back Dalima Chhibber added, talking to the AIFF website.
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