The Blue Tigers missed a host of opportunities and hit the woodwork twice, but couldn’t register a goal in the 90 minutes. The win took the Whites to the top of Group A, while India dropped down to the second spot. All four teams in the group now have a chance to qualify for the knockout stage.

Speaking at the post-match press conference, India head coach Stephen Constantine congratulated the Emiratis for the result before arguing that his players deserved more for their efforts. “Firstly, congratulations to UAE for its win. We created enough chances to win two games, not one. When you don’t convert them, they tend to come back and you pay for it. Last game we converted, this game we didn’t. UAE had three shots on goal, one hit the post and the other two went it. We deserved a draw, at least,” said Constantine. 

The Englishman then went on to laud each of his players for their valiant effort, on a day which he felt just didn’t belong to them. Urging his wards to keep their chins up, Constantine said, “Yes, the boys gave absolutely everything. I just felt we just didn’t covert and we paid. We hit the bar twice, a couple of brilliant saves from its keeper and a couple of chances we should have scored. I have 23 bitterly disappointed boys. You couldn’t say that a few years ago. We would come here (in the past) and lose 0-2 and be quite happy. The boys know we could have taken something from this game.”

Udanta Singh looked to be in a bit of discomfort before being subbed off in the second half. Confirming that it was more of a precautionary measure, the coach informed, “He’s one of those boys who covered quite a few kilometres. To be fair, he was looking a little bit jaded. Injury-wise, he seems okay. We thought if we get Jackichand (Singh) on, it’ll give us a little bit of a spark down that side.”

When asked whether he thought his side could compete on even footing with other higher-ranked teams in the tournament, Constantine opined, “We can give anyone a game. That’s clear from our performances. Some of the UAE players were coming up to me and saying that they recognised we were good. That’s nice, but at the end of the day, we lost. We’ll pick ourselves up and get ready for the next game.”