Eagerly waiting for matches to start: Sunil Chhetri on Intercontinental Cup

Indian football team captain Sunil Chhetri on Thursday said that he and his team are eagerly waiting for their Intercontinental Cup 2023 matches to startThe India Senior Mens Team will begin their Intercontinental Cup 2023 campaign with a firstever meeting against Mongolia on Friday at the Kalinga Stadium in BhubaneswarHosts India won the inaugural tournament in 2018 in Mumbai defeating Kenya 20 in the final while DPR Korea beat Tajikistan in the last edition in Ahmedabad in 2019The big target for India is the AFC Asian Cup in Qatar in seven months time and with the Blue Tigers set to play several matches until the end of this yearIndia has been in camp in Bhubaneswar since May 15 giving head coach Igor Stimac plenty of time to make a strong assessment of his squad The team could potentially play as many as nine matches in less than a month with the SAFF Championship also beginning on June 21 in BengaluruThe preparations are going well We are here for the last three weeks and we are eagerly waiting for the matches to start Indian football team captain Sunil Chhetri told ANIEarlier in the prematch press conferences with the head coach Igor Stimac Chettri said he cannot wait to wear the blue of India for the first time in OdishaMe and the boys are very excited Its strange that we have never played in Bhubaneswar or anywhere in Odisha before in my career so we are really happy to be here Everything from our hospitality to training pitches has been topnotch and we have made good use of the three weeks here Hopefully we dont have just three games here but four including the final said the skipper Chettri saidThe Blue Tigers are all geared up to lift the trophy once again and head coach Igor Stimac iterated that during the pretournament press conference on ThursdayHe said as quoted by an AIFF press release We are expecting to win the tournament and thats why were here We will do everything possible to make that happenAlthough our opponents in the Intercontinental Cup are not as tough as the teams well face in the Asian Cup they are still good and competitive Mongolia is a very aggressive side with a lot of young players in midfield and upfront They press high press and play counterattacking football Even though they may find it difficult to adapt to the warm weather here their players are arriving in competitive form as the Mongolian league is going on at the moment said Stimac sharing his thoughts on Indias East Asian opponentsAlso Read Durand Cup football tournament to make its way to Shillong and KokrajharThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever