Kotal and Mahesh join national camp for three-nation football tournament

Indian football team head coach Igor Stimac on Sunday included Pritam Kotal and Naorem Mahesh Singh in the national camp here as replacements for injured Shivashakthi Narayanan and Glenn Martins. India began their camp on Thursday to prepare for the upcoming three-nation international football tournament to be held in Imphal. In this tournament, the team will face Myanmar (March 22) and Kyrgyzstan Republic (March 28) at the Khuman Lampak Stadium.

Stimac said, “We have just trained for three days with the players who were not in the Hero ISL final. The rest of the players will be joining the camp today (Sunday), so we will have one more training session with all of them before leaving for Imphal. Stimac said the team management will have to be very careful and not take any chances with the players playing in Saturday’s ISL final, which includes charismatic striker Sunil Chhetri.

He said, “The health of the players is paramount. Players also play for the club and we should not be irresponsible. The Indian team aims to prepare for a good performance in the AFC Asian Cup to be held in Qatar in January-February next year.