After playing all their matches during the under-17 World Cup matches in the national capital, luis Norton de Matos and his young troops will be back to play Hero I-league in a new avatar called Indian Arrows. The young side's left-back Sanjeev Stalin is keenly looking forward to play in front of their home crowd again.
"I am eagerly waiting for the opportunity to play in front of Delhi football fans again as crowd support plays a part in our performance," said the youngster at the launch of the 11th edition of the I-league, where he was accompanied by players and coaches of all ten participating clubs. "I am sure they will come and support. We won some hearts with our performance during the World Cup. It might not be 100 per cent strength crowd but I am expecting at least half of them will come and cheer for us during the I-league matches."
Due to unavailability of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Indian Arrows are forced to play their first two home matches in Goa. Their first match will be against Chennai City FC on 29th November and the next game will be against Minerva Punjab on 5th December. The Matos-coached side will be back at JlN stadium for their third home game against Gokulam Kerala FC, scheduled on 22nd December.
Stalin was thankful for the platform provided to them by the All India football federation and I-league. He added: "I respect each and every opponent but it will be difficult for everyone to play against us."
The set-piece specialist also said that I-league matters the most to them at the moment but he is open to the idea of playing competitive tournaments abroad with the squad.
"Right now we are focused on I-league but we don't mind going out for foreign tournaments. Exposure trips are really good for budding players like us. If we just play in India, we only learn Indian football, and if we go out, we will get to know how global football scenario is," said Stalin.
The entire under-17 World Cup squad IJIJ except for few - were promoted to the under-19 team and they went to Saudi Arabia for AFC under-19 qualifiers last month. They came back with four points in three matches but failed to qualify for the next round. Despite it the left-back still feels there was plenty to take away from the tournament.
"We got to learn a lot from playing in the AFC qualifiers. One learns from every match they play — no matter how tough or easy the game is. In World Cup, the crowd was behind us but in Saudi Arabia that wasn't the case, so it was another experience of playing a competitive game against the home team. Saying that, we still got some Indian support in Saudi Arabia as Indians are everywhere," said Sanjeev.
Coach Matos felt proud of the growth his boys have made this year and said playing in I-league is an important jump for them to continue the process.
"I think it is a fantastic step for the development of Indian football. I am very proud of what these boys got to gain this year.
“They played in under-17 World Cup, then immediately went for the AFC qualifiers in Saudi Arabia, now another tough challenge in I-league. For the development of the players we need to jump some steps and go for an experience like this," said Matos.