The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has scheduled four international friendlies for the Indian women's squad in Dubai and Manama later this month.
India is gearing up for the AFC Women's Asian Cup 2022, which will be held in the country early next year.
The team arrived in Ranchi over a month ago and has been training with coach Thomas Dennerby. They will now have the opportunity to put what they have learned in training into practise.
India will face the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on October 2 before facing Tunisia two days later in Dubai, according to sources. After that, the team will travel to Manama to play Bahrain and Chinese Taipei.
“In times of Covid-19, it’s not easy to arrange friendlies,” said a senior AIFF official. “We have four international matches next month, and once we are done with these games, there are plans to play two top-tier clubs in Sweden. Coach Dennerby is in touch with his contacts for confirmations.”
Dennerby guided Sweden to third place at the 2011 World Cup and a quarterfinal appearance at the 2012 London Olympics. He also coached Nigeria in the 2019 Women's World Cup and is now in charge of leading India to the Asian Cup knockout stage in 2022.
Dennerby believes that India needs to play at least 10 international matches to have a chance.
“Even if we prepare the team now with good endurance training and hard work, you need to put all this part of training into games,” said Dennerby. “We are working hard on that. We need to play not less than 10 games before the tournament starts. We need to play different types of opponents with different styles.
“We need to play some teams that are maybe a little bit weaker to work with attacking ideas and some games against equal teams. We also need to try and find opponents who are a little bit better, who will help us to speed up the pace of the game, decision making, passing and receiving, all that you need to do when you play the best ones.”
After the 1979 edition, India will host the AFC Women's Asian Cup for the second time. From January 20 to February 6, 2022, the event will be held in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and Pune.
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