Koji Gyotoku, head coach of Nepal, spoke to the press ahead of his team's friendly match against India. The man from Japan spoke of tomorrow's game against India as a chance to improve his team.
"This match is important in preparing for the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers. We have a match against Yemen next week but this is also an equally important match. We need friendly matches and there’s a big need for us to get a good result and confidence out of this game. This will be a big chance to improve ourselves."
Gyotoku expects a difficult challenge from India, who climbed upto rank 100 in FIFA's charts.
"It’s a very difficult match for us. Few days back the FIFA rankings came out-India are placed at 100 while we are at 169. India’s team has improved in the last two years under the foreign coach [Stephen Constantine] and tomorrow’s match will be very difficult for us, but we will try to win. We need to get something from the match."
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Next Match
The Gorkhalis manager also confirmed game time for Rohit Chand, who joined the squad on Sunday.
"I took the team for a month as a part of the preparation. Rohit Chand joined us last night. Of course, I shall use him tomorrow. But this is for preparing him for the match against Yemen."
He also conceded that he believes the Indian team is much better than Nepal.
"Our team is just learning. They are on their way. They are making efforts but skill, tactics and physically, I believe the Indian team is better. But we will try our best."
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The Gorkhalis were severely affected by a massive earthquake in their country in 2015. Coach Gyotoku said that his team are recovering from the aftermath of the natural disaster and is confident of improvement.
"Nepal has a lot of problems but we need to go up step-by-step and grow. For example-there was an earthquake two-three years back in Nepal. Till date we can’t use the national stadium as it is broken. We have to go outside to play matches. But players who play well, think and learn from me and Japan Football Association, do well. JPA also supports Nepal FA. I believe Nepal football can improve a lot."
Nepal national team skipper Biraj Maharjan, who was also in attendance at the press conference, echoed the statements of his coach.
"India has improved a lot and we are ardent watchers of Indian Football as well to learn something from them [the Indian Team]. We can learn many things from India."
Both the coach and the skipper stressed the importance of treating the game as an opportunity to learn and went onto suggest that the team against India might feature plenty of young talent.