Despite dominating the majority of the game, the Indian football team managed to play out a 1-1 draw against Kuwait in the final group fixture in the SAFF Championship.
Sunil Chhetri, the fourth-highest goal scorer in international football scored again for the team. The striker scored an awesome volley in the first half, setting the team towards an impressive victory. However, all hell went loose during the dying minutes of the game. During the 82nd minute, the match officials flashed three red cards as India coach Igor Stimac, Team India defender Rahim Ali and Kuwait’s Al Qallaf were sent off.
Extremely unfortunate result in the end.
After dominating the game for more than 90 minutes, the #BlueTigers 🐯 had to settle for a draw 😔#INDKUW ⚔️ #SAFFChampionship2023 🏆 #IndianFootball ⚽ pic.twitter.com/2rj2fyBAf4
— Indian Football Team (@IndianFootball) June 27, 2023
Taking advantage of the chaos, Kuwait started building attacks and counter-attacking towards India’s goal. As it seemed like India was heading towards a victory, an unfortunate own goal by Anwar Ali dashed the home side’s hopes of securing a win. As a result, of the goal, the match ended in a draw.
With this, the Indian football team conceded their first goal in over a year. Both India and Kuwait finished with 7 points and qualified for the semi-finals. But, Kuwait grabbed the top position as they had a better goal difference than India.
India will now face Group B topper Lebanon while Kuwait will now face either Bangladesh or Maldives in the SAFF Championship.
