9-men India go down to UAE in controversial pre-WC qualifier

Jul 24, 2011 |

IANS

Tags:

Two red cards in four minutes dashed India's hopes as they went down 3-0 to United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the controversial first-leg of the Asian qualifiers for the 2014 FIFA World Cup here Saturday.

India lost two men by the 23rd minute after defender Debabrata Roy and goalkeeper Subrata Paul picked up red cards and for the rest of the match, the nine men were left defending. Hamdan Al Kamali (20th) and Mohamed Al Shehhi (29th) converted the penalty strikes while Abdulrahman Al Hamadi added a third in the 81st minute.

India's fate was sealed within 23 minutes during which two needless fouls by Roy and Paul, who picked up his second consecutive red card in a World Cup qualifier, saw the hosts lose the two within a gap of four minutes. Roy was guilty of pulling down Mohammed Al Shhehi in the 19th minute while Paul was red carded by Qatari referee Banjar Al Doasri for an infringement on Al Hammadi in the 23th minute.

Paul's marching orders infuriated the Indian players and the game was held up for almost six minutes and it resumed only after the intervention of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) officials.

India coach Armando Colaco had to make structural changes in the team by replacing a rusty Steven Dias, much to his displeasure, with Salgaocar goalkeeper Karanjit Singh, who did a great job in the remaining sixty minutes. Striker Sunil Chettri also fell back in the mid-field behind striker Jeje Lalpeklua.

UAE, however, couldn't take much advantage of India's miseries and never looked like a side that drubbed the visitors 5-0 in an international friendly last November.

Indians were unable to create any goal bound moves and went into the break 0-2.

In the second half India played a compact game as they were not left with much options. Colaco replaced an aggressive Mehtab Hussain, who picked up a yellow card, with crafty Jewel Raja Sheikh but fighting against an 11-man team was an uphill task for India.

The expected happened in the 81st minute after Al Hammadi scored the third from defence splitting a back heel by Abdul Rahman.

India now have to win the return-leg in Delhi, slated for July 28, by a margin of four goals or more to move to the second round.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/86266" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-e054c0dd3c85cbc92b61c3be26f9a43d" value="form-e054c0dd3c85cbc92b61c3be26f9a43d" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86486667" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>