It will be a great experience playing against India: Pakistan head coach
Head Coach José Antonio Nogueira
who has taken over the reins of Pakistan Football Team after their long absence
from International Football has set his focus to catch up with India in next
2-3 years and “overtake them (India) to claim the pole position in the SAFF
region.”
"Undoubtedly, India are the numero uno in
the region. Coming back from a 3-year long hiatus, we are nowhere close to
them. My first target is to close the gap in the next 2-3 years. We’ll then set
the target to conquer the region,” Nogueira said.
Pakistan meet India in the
semi-finals of the SAFF Suzuki Cup on Wednesday (September 12) and Nogueira
said that the team is eagerly looking forward to the match.
“It will be a great experience for me and my
team when we play India in the semis,” Nogueira, who has earlier coached Sierra
Leone, Guinea-Bissau and St. Kitts and Nevis, smiles.
"We will gain some invaluable experience
from those 90 minutes. India have achieved some major feats to reach the next
level. I feel the experience which India gather playing against the opponents
like Japan or maybe a South Korea, we'll get against them (India)."
The coach seemed to follow Indian Football
very closely and described the exposure tours to the Indian age-group National
Teams as a “very positive development.”
"India have laid down a blueprint and
have worked relentlessly so far to execute it. Before the FIFA U17 World Cup,
the team had travelled to Brazil for an exposure trip. Even the World Cup was
so immaculately conducted,” he opined.
"Arranging exposure trips for the
age-group teams, playing quality opponents often are some of the good things
which have happened to Indian Football recently. The upsurge in the FIFA
Ranking is the perfect synergy of these efforts,” he maintained.
How much challenging is your present job?
"I knew this job will be a very
challenging one but as a coach, it's my duty to accept it. It was like of
coming out from zero and restarting the system. Building a National team is not
a magic. But the players have responded well so far."
"We had the PFF Cup and 65 players were
selected from there. Since then, we shortlisted 32 and flew to Jakarta to
compete in the Asian Games. We had some really tough games against Japan,
Vietnam before landing here,” he informed.