Gurpreet out as Jamil names 23-player India squad for New Zealand friendlies

Gurpreet out as Jamil names 23 for New Zealand

Khalid Jamil has named a 23-player squad for the Indian football team’s two friendlies against New Zealand, and one name dominated the coverage: goalkeeper Gurpreet was left out. The AIFF announced the list; ThePrint led its report with the omission. Jamil, the head coach of the men’s national team, picked the full complement allowed for a senior international camp, so the 23 are the players in contention for this window. The list works the way every senior camp does: the coach’s first choices plus the bench, set before the first whistle. No reason for Gurpreet’s exclusion has been given.

For the Indian football team, the spot between the sticks is the most examined on the roster, and ThePrint’s headline made the goalkeeper the whole story, which tells you how unusual such a cut is. A friendly carries no trophy, and that’s exactly why coaches use these games to settle choices. What is certain is that the gloves now belong to someone else, and only the pitch will show whether that becomes the settled picture. For a goalkeeper, losing the shirt is the deepest cut in the game; the question now is who steps up to wear it.

A U-23 squad in the same window

The friendlies aren’t only a senior-team exercise. Hindustan Times reported India confirmed its U-23 squad for the same opposition, so two age groups face New Zealand in the same conditions. The Daily Star framed India’s U-23 move as priorities beyond SAFF, the South Asian regional championship. In plain terms, that means the planning points at stiffer tests abroad rather than the regional circuit, and the U-23 pool doubles as the senior team’s next depth chart. SAFF is the championship contested by the nations of South Asia, so the point The Daily Star is making is that India wants its young players measured against opposition from outside that group. Minutes in New Zealand count twice.

A missing NOC stops one of India’s top women footballers

The women’s game has its own version of a selection problem, and it doesn’t sit with the coach. Times Now reported that Ashalata Devi, a prominent figure in Indian women’s football, is unable to play in the AFC Women’s Champions League — the top club competition in Asia — because the No Objection Certificate from her employer, the Indian Railways, is missing. The AFC Women’s Champions League is where the top women’s clubs of Asia meet, so a player’s absence from it is not a minor one. A No Objection Certificate is the written consent an employer gives before an employee is released for an outside duty. In women’s Indian football, the employer is often a public sector body such as the Railways, so a call-up can be stopped by a desk in a government office.

Take Ashalata Devi as the concrete case. She is one of the biggest names in Indian women’s football, yet she found herself kept out of the continental club competition by her own employer’s paperwork. Times Now’s report, framed around her struggle, says the NOC exposes women’s Indian football’s bigger problem: control of a player’s release sits with her employer’s signature, not with the federation or the club.

What’s next

The two friendlies are the date to watch. The match sheets will show who Jamil hands the goalkeeping to in Gurpreet’s place, and the Indian football team’s results against New Zealand will be the first read on this squad. The U-23 outing will tell whether the younger group handles the step up from the regional circuit to a New Zealand standard. For Devi, the question is whether the Railways issue the certificate before her club’s continental run begins, and whether administrators push back when an employer’s signature decides a player’s fate.

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Ananya Suresh

Ananya Suresh writes about movies, OTT releases, television, entertainment, celebrities and popular culture. She follows emerging trends and brings together the latest stories and developments from the entertainment world.

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