AIFF announces squad for AFC Beach Soccer Asian Cup 2025

All India Football Federation (AIFF), on Thursday, announced the 12-member squad for India's return at the AFC Beach Soccer Asian Cup after a long wait of 18 years.

India is set to compete at the 2025 edition of the Beach Soccer Asian Cup, scheduled to start on March 20th in Pattaya, Thailand. India was drawn against hosts Thailand, Kuwait, and Lebanon.

This will be India's first international beach soccer tournament after the 2008 Asian Beach Games, where India lost all three of their group stage matches.

Mohd Faizal Bin MD Sood of Malaysia will be the head coach of the Indian team for this 10-day competition.

Format

There are 16 teams in the tournament who were seeded into four pots based on their final ranking from the 2023 tournament, where Thailand was seeded first as the host association.

These teams were drawn into four groups of four teams each. The top two finishers from each group will move to the quarterfinals, and the winner will be decided based on a single-leg knockout format.

India is drawn in Group A with three more experienced sides. Thailand and Kuwait were the quarter-finalists in the Previous edition, while Lebanon was eliminated in the group stage.

It also offered a qualification to the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, where the top three teams will fill the three berths allocated to the AFC for the 2025 edition of the World Cup in the Seychelles.

Squad

Goalkeepers: Pratik Kankonkar, Raj Chauhan

Defenders: Nehal Parab, Srijith Babu, Jaypal Singh Sirsa, Umarul Mukthar

Midfielders: Musheer TKB, Rohith Yesudas, Latish Kunkalkar

Strikers: Amit Godara, Satish Naik, and Muhammed Akram.

India's schedule (All matches in IST):

March 20: Thailand vs India - 7:00 PM

March 22: India vs Kuwait - 3:30 PM

March 24: Lebanon vs India - 3:30 PM