Sunil Chhetri scored a hat-trick for India in Pakistan’s 0-4 loss against India in the SAFF Championship opening.
Pakistan’s football squad suffered an 0-4 defeat against archrival India in the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship. Sunil Chhetri scored a hat-trick for India, but Udanta Singh scored only one goal in the blowout. While there is no doubting that India dominated Pakistan for the whole 90 minutes, the visitors blamed their setback in part on their late arrival for the match. Torben Witajewski, Pakistan’s coach, believes the team’s immigration and tickets issues had a significant part in their performance versus India.
“The issue with the trip was that we received the visa very late and had a lot of problems with immigration in Mumbai at the airport.” So it was difficult for the boys. Today (Wednesday), the final group came at half past one in the motel. After 16 hours, correct. So it’s not easy, it’s extremely difficult, but you have to deal with it. “You can’t change it,” stated Pakistan’s coach, according to the Hindustan Times.
The Pakistan football team did not have the expected build-up ahead of its SAFF Championship opening against hosts India, with more than half of the squad arriving barely six hours before kickoff owing to a lack of seats on a single aircraft.
“We couldn’t change the situation; the issue is the visa.” As a result, we had a lot of issues in Mauritius. So it was difficult, but we cannot alter. However, if we had more time, the outcome would be different. The players cannot sleep if you travel at night. We arrived at half past one today, which is not ideal for a match. We can’t anticipate much from these people.”
The strange line of events began when the Pakistan squad landed in Mumbai from Mauritius around 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday. The Pakistan squad of 32 players and coaches was unable to locate seats on a single plane and was forced to break into two groups.
The second wave arrived at their team accommodation near Kanteerava Stadium just after 1:00 p.m., just six hours before start.
This was also India and Pakistan’s first football match since September 2018. On that day, India had trounced the neighbours 3-1 in the SAFF semifinals.
