Indian women face USA in three-nation U23 football event

The Indian women's football team will look to beef up its attack when it takes on USA in the second match of the three-nation U23 tournament at Laröds IP, Sweden on Saturday. It was an injury-time goal which had spoilt India's broth and despite putting up a spirited effort, they lost 0-1 to Sweden in the opening match and the Suren Chettri-coached side will look to produce the goods against USA.

"If we want to win, we need to score," Chettri said in a release. "We will play the way we played against Sweden and focus on attacking more this time. "It was sad to lose the last game but the girls had put up their best effort against the number 2 in World FIFA ranking. We played a really good defending game, whatever skills we had we tried to show on the pitch and we will be doing the same tomorrow," he maintained. One of the players who stood firm for 90 minutes but conceded an injury-time goal was goalkeeper Aditi Chauhan.

"Aditi is an experienced player and she played a mature game last day. I would say she had put up all the effort for the team, but unfortunately, we lost," Chettri said. Aditi too looked to take the positives and vowed to come stronger on Saturday. "There are a lot of positives from the last game and the team is motivated to come back even stronger against USA," he said. "It was disappointing to concede in the last moment but everyone gave their best effort and I am proud of the girls. We understand the difference between the ranking and standard of the play, and hopefully, we will continue to perform well tomorrow as well."

Speaking about her own performance against Sweden, Aditi said, "I am really happy with my performance, and the game against Sweden was probably my best game so far. "As a senior player, this is a kind of performance you expect from yourself. I am happy that I could contribute to my team against a tough opponent."