Navi Mumbai: Indian Football Team Coach Thomas Dennerby on Saturday acknowledged that it must be more clinical in finishing if it makes women’s quarter-finals of the Asian Cup.
India were held to a goalless draw by Iran rank low in their tournament opener, while Chinese Taipei opponent home team on Sunday, 4-0 vacated by eight-time Chinese champions.
Apart from all the domination of Iran, blue tigress could not find the net, and cost three points.
“These things come from the daily training, and we’re working on it.
If you have a chance, you need to pick it up quickly, perhaps on the first touch itself, if possible,” said Dennerby.
“We need to convert our chances.
We were a bit slow in the last game and that gave the rival defenders time to recover, and come to us.
It is the little things that we need to be better.” He said the team is now solely focused on the game against Chinese Taipei and do not think about outing against Iran.
“For us, the focus is solely on the game against Chinese Taipei.
Even if they lost to China, they are still a good team.
We need to have a good performance to take a point from the game,” said head coach.
As things stand, China is at the top of Group A with three points, while India and Iran tied for second place respectively.
Chinese Taipei has yet to open their account.
Dennerby refused to get into the permutations and combinations, and stressed the good performance will present a “decent chance” for blue tigress to get to shelter.
“When you get a decent points in the group stage you always have a chance to qualify.
We need to have a good game against Chinese Taipei and get points,” Dennerby maintained.
“We are not at all concerned with the current table.
We have to complete our work in the next 90 minutes.” Besides the two main teams, two third side in the three groups will qualify for the quarter-finals.
All semi-finalists of the tournament in progress is directly qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand.
Two more teams from the remaining four quarter-finalists will also get a bed directly to the World Cup if Australia makes it to the semi-finals of this tournament, which is very likely.
That means that even the team that lost in the quarterfinals to directly qualify for the World Cup if they win the play-off match of the AFC Asian Cup on Feb.
2 and 4.
The two quarter-finalists will display the intercontinental play-off.