AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: Keeping in mind that the youth development is an endless and continuous process, All India Football Federation in coordination with the Sports Authority of India has organised an exposure tour for the India U-15 team to travel to China to play in the 2018 Jinshan International Youth Football Championship - Shanghai, China.

The matches will be held at the Shanghai Jinshan Sports Centre, (Shanghai, China) from August 25 to 30 anf the tournament is being organised by the Shanghai Hengxin Sports Culture Development Co., Ltd, a guiding unit of the China Football Association.

India have been clubbed with Western Australia Team, China Red U-15 Team, SK Slavia Praha and the Group winners would be advancing to play the final match while the 2nd placed team would be playing for the 3rd and 4th place with the 2nd placed team from the other group.

National Team Director Abhishek Yadav said: “We at AIFF remain committed to provide competitive overseas exposure from a young age to our youth teams and also to the coaches. I am happy that the first outing for this new group is a competition in China that includes the Chinese youth teams. The calendar includes more tours on a regular basis.”

The 21-member squad has been selected on basis of Phase 1 trials which were held in Cuttack, Odisha from August 6 onwards. Around 75 boys attended the trials after which the selected boys were put into a Camp under Head Coach Shuvendu Panda. However, there would be further scouting across India, trials and camps in the near future to strengthen the squad in the near future. Boys are also to be scouted from the youth leagues, the NFC and other age-group competitions.

“This is a new batch comprising 2003/04 born boys. The AIFF has started to work on will participate in India's continental and FIFA qualification campaigns from 2019 onwards. We have kicked-off scouting activities in this quarter and will aggressively cover more states in the coming months,” he informed. 

“I expect to invite dozens of talented boys to trials and that we will be ready with a solid bunch of players to form the base of this age-group by the end of the year.”

India’s tour schedule in the tournament is as follows:

August 25: Western Australia Team vs India U-15.

August 26: SK Slavia Praha vs India U-15.

August 28: India U-15 vs China Red U-15.