China 0-0 India: Tactical Analysis as Constantine's men scrape lucky draw

There is no sugarcoating that. India rode their luck in Souzhou, as a wasteful Chinese team and an inspired Gurpreet Singh Sandhu combined to give the Blue Tigers a creditable 0-0 draw against China in an international friendly.To get more china sport news, you can visit shine news official website.

India started in their typical 4-4-2 formation, which coach Stephen Constantine has somehow still stuck with. Pronay Halder and Anirudh Thapa started in central midfield, with regular centre-back Anas Edathodika making way for Subhasish Bose.
What followed was a prototypical example of the football that Stephen Constantine's India have played for a very long time now - intensely physical and combative, but barely any technical nous on display.

Can we stop using the 4-4-2 please?
The style is simple and uncomplicated, but it also doesn't suit a lot of the players that India have at their disposal. India's two strikers are both 5' 7" tall. India play long balls up from defense, looking to go route one all the time. How can anybody not see the fallacy there?

To Jeje Lalpekhlua and Sunil Chhetri's credit, both have shown only too often that their physical strength and aerial ability is top-notch for men that small. But, the simple truth remains that it does not suit the biggest strengths that they have.

In their respective clubs, Chhetri and Jeje have both had the most productive runs when playing alongside others that they can play intelligent one-twos with, relying more on quick movement and intelligent passing than just plain old physical hustle.

Now, India doesn't have a Miku or a Raphael Augusto in their ranks, but India has players blessed with more technical ability than Constantine's style gives them credit for.

In this game, it was clear that India was causing the Chinese defense some worry when the likes of Chhetri and Thapa had the ball at their feet. But India just did not hold on to possession for long enough, for it to be a sustained threat.
For a non-possession style of football to be a threat in an attacking sense, you need to be quick on transitions, quick to move the ball between the lines.

For that, your attacking players need to be on the same page. Udanta Singh and Holicharan Narzary both had off-days on the flanks, and so did Jeje.

But most importantly, Udanta and Narzary were basically playing as auxiliary full-backs themselves.

So when the opportunities did come for the transitions, they were too far away from the Chinese defense to pose a presentable threat to them.

Even if the long-ball style is accepted as what India are going to be doing at the Asian Cup, there were problems with how it was executed. If you are going route-one most of the time, you need to be hungry to win the second ball, have the desire to challenge the 50-50s.

Once again, the fact that India sat so deep, and had only Chhetri and Jeje anywhere near the Chinese half meant that there weren't enough bodies around to feed off them, even if they won they long balls.

The 4-4-2 also shackled India's best player on the night. Anirudh Thapa's strengths are moving forward from midfield. He showed that he's developed an understanding with Chhetri, and there was some neat interplay between the two at times.

But having only Halder alongside in the centre of the park meant that Thapa had to sit back more often to absorb the pressure the Chinese were putting on India.