AFC Challenge Cup 2012: Know the Participating Team – India

India is a member of the Asian Football Confederation. Since 1948, the AIFF has been affiliated with FIFA, the international governing body for football. In 1954, AIFF became one of the founder members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). 

At the peak of its success during the 1950s and 1960s, the team was automatically advanced to play in the 1950 FIFA World Cup (all the other Asian teams withdrew), but they did not go to the tournament in Brazil due to the cost of travel, lack of practice time, team selection issues, their refusal to not play barefoot and valuing Olympics over FIFA World cup. They won gold medals at two Asian Games, and held the record for the best performance by an Asian football team at the Olympics.

Nickname: Blue Tigers

Kit: India traditionally wear a blue strip. As of 2010, Nike, Inc is the kit provider to the Indian National Football team, with Panasonic as sponsoring partner.

Coach: Savio Medeira is the head coach of the team.

FIFA Ranking: The current FIFA Ranking of the team is 154

Player To Be Watched: Sunil Chettri and Sushil Singh, both strikers are the players to be watched in Indian squad. Jewel Raja and Rocus Lamare are also the influential players in the team

Supporters: Indian Football fans hardly travel with the team as India is known for cricket madness. But west Bengalis people follow cricket

World Cup Record:
Uruguay 1930-50     Did not enter
Brazil 1950     Qualified but withdrew
1958-82        Did not enter
1982 -2014    Didn't Qualify

AFC Asian Cup Record:
Hong Kong 1956     Did not enter    
South Korea 1960     Did not Qualify    
Israel 1964     Runner Up    
1968 to 1980     Did not Qualify    
Singapore 1984     Round 1        
1988 to 2007     Did not Qualify    
Qatar 2011     Round 1    

SAFF Championship Record:

Pakistan 1993      Champions
Sri Lanka 1995      Runners up
Nepal 1997     Champions
India 1999      Champions
Bangladesh 2003    Third Place
Pakistan 2005     Champions
Sri Lanka Maldives2008 Runners up
Bangladesh 2009 Champions
India 2011  Champions

AFC Challenge Cup record:

2006- Quarter Finals
2008- Champions
2010-Group Stage
2012-Qualified

First International Match:The Indian team played first International match against France in 1948 (which is official) which they lost 1-2.

Biggest Win: India had hammered Australia 7-1 in 1955

Biggest Defeat: Soviet Union had hammered India 11-1 in 1958