Kripa Sharma

Lalitpur, March 21:

The Nepali Under-13 players are working hard for the AFC Festival of Football to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh from April 1-7. Coached by Kishor KC and his assistant Siddhi Byanjankar, the team is undergoing the rigours training twice a day. “Two hours in the camp is more than sufficient for these kids,” said senior coach Shyam Thapa, who has been supervising the team’s practice at ANFA Complex. “The players do not have academic pressure and they are just concentrating on the game, which is good for us and them as well,” he added. The event, organised by Asian Football Confederation (AFC) annually, is played at five regions — Central and South Asian, West Asian, Central and South Asia, Asean, East Asia — with two groups in each region.

Nepal is in Group C — which falls in Central and South Asian Region — along with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and two Bangladeshi teams. Nepal will begin its title defence with a match with the hosts’ B team on April 2. The AFC has named it a festival rather than a tournament, as it aims to teach basic rules and disciplines of the sport. The AFC has introduced the use of Green Card since the last edition held in Kathmandu. A player is awarded a Green Card for his positive attitude towards the opponents during the match. Each player has to play for 20 minutes and also go through individual skill tests. “The skills are tested by seeing how good a player is at ball jogging, in-foot dribbling, instep-target and ring target,” said senior coach Ashok KC.

“The boys have improved a lot in their skills. They need to work hard on tactical part,” said coach Kishor KC, who admitted that the defence line was improved since the exhibition match on March 13. “We are doing our best to teach them the disciplinary aspects of the game, as the whole event is based on that.” The squad, which is a composite of players from ANFA academies of Kathmandu, Dharan and Hetauda, and some from Laboratory School, were selected by seven-member selection team from more than 500 aspiring players. “It was a difficult task for us to pick the team,” said Ashok KC. “The selection was done on 3B basis — body balance, ball skill and brain.” In the first phase, 25 players were selected and 18 of those were picked for the final showdown. SQUAD: Nirajan Malla, Ganesh Khadka, Shiva Shrestha, Satish Bhandari, Rabin Thapa, Jagjit Shrestha, Rabi Thapa, Badal Ghising, Sabindra Shrestha, Naresh Pokharel, Ram Krishna GC, Raju Mandal, Karfu Rasaili, Kushal Bhijel, Bijay Gurung, Roshan Raut, Nabin Maharjan and Bishal Shrestha.