First Three Things Khalid Jamil Needs To Do As Indian Football Team Head Coach
Khalid Jamil's appointment as head coach of the Indian men's national football team on Friday marked a historic moment. Not only is he the first Indian to take the role since 2012, but he also steps in at a time when the Blue Tigers urgently need direction, belief, and revival.
A highly respected figure in Indian football, Jamil has made his mark in both the I-League and the Indian Super League (ISL). He famously led Aizawl FC to a historic I-League title in 2017 and had impressive stints in the ISL, most notably taking NorthEast United FC to the playoffs in the 2020-21 season and, more recently, guiding Jamshedpur FC to the ISL semi-finals and Kalinga Super Cup final in the 2024-25 season.
Jamil's track record in Indian football speaks for itself, and now, with the reins of the national team in his hands, he has an opportunity to shape a new narrative for the Blue Tigers.
What Khalid Jamil Needs To Do As Indian Men's Football Team Head Coach?
1 – Get the team scoring goals
India's biggest immediate challenge is improving their output in front of goal. The Blue Tigers have not found the net in their last three matches. They played out a goalless draw against Bangladesh in their opening game of the AFC Asian Cup 2027 qualifiers, followed by a narrow 1-0 loss to Hong Kong. They suffered a 2-0 friendly defeat to Thailand in between.
Their last goal came in a 3-0 friendly win over the Maldives at home in March, which also remains their only win in the calendar year so far. Under Marquez, India scored five goals across eight matches, finding the net in just three of those games.
With key fixtures coming up in the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers, India will need to rediscover their attacking rhythm. While the team has shown solidity at the back and moments of promise going forward, converting chances and maintaining composure in the final third will be an area Jamil will look to address.
His teams in the ISL have often shown a knack for scoring in transition and being clinical with limited opportunities, traits that could serve India well in the months to come.
2 – Get India's AFC Asian Cup qualifiers campaign back on track
The AFC Asian Cup 2027 qualifiers are a major focus for the national team, and India have ground to make up. After two games in Group C, the Blue Tigers sit at the bottom of the standings with one point, having drawn against Bangladesh and lost to Hong Kong.
The road ahead includes crucial fixtures against Singapore in October, a doubleheader that could prove pivotal to the campaign.
Before that, Jamil's first assignment will be the CAFA Nations Cup, where India are set to face Tajikistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. These games will serve as valuable preparation not just to build chemistry within the squad, but also to fine-tune systems ahead of the qualifiers.
India had previously qualified for back-to-back editions of the AFC Asian Cup for the first time, the second one coming under Igor Stimac, and maintaining that momentum will be key. Jamil's task will be to steady the campaign and put India back in contention for a spot in the continental tournament.
3 – Bring structure and efficiency to India's play
One of the biggest tasks for Jamil will be to instil a sense of tactical clarity in the Indian team. Under former head coach Igor Stimac, India attempted to transition towards a more possession-based style of play. While that approach had its moments, it didn't yield the best results. The team often struggled to control matches or convert possession into meaningful goal-scoring chances. A similar pattern was seen more recently under Marquez, who also encouraged more ball progression from the back.
Jamil, however, is a different profile of coach. He has made a name for himself in Indian football as a pragmatic tactician, one who builds teams that are difficult to break down and highly efficient on the counter. His memorable run with NorthEast United FC in the 2020-21 season showed how organised and effective his teams can be, something he repeated by guiding Jamshedpur FC to the playoffs in 2024-25.
India need a clear blueprint to fall back on, especially in crunch matches where margins are fine. If Jamil can build a team that knows what it's trying to do both with and without the ball, he'll have solved a major piece of the puzzle.
view comments
Location :
Jamshedpur, India, India
First Published:
August 02, 2025, 15:25 IST
News sports » football First Three Things Khalid Jamil Needs To Do As Indian Football Team Head Coach
Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
13 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Shubman Gill's pursuit of perfection: How Indian captain put in serious hours to prepare for English Test and came out trumps
It was about a month before he was to take the most important flight of his life to Heathrow, London, for his first assignment as India's Test captain at 25. On one gloomy day in Chandigarh before Shubman Gill came to England, England came to Shubman Gill. It was IPL time, he was leading the Gujarat Titans and having nets on what seemed like a 'dicey' pitch – some balls flying towards his face, others darting at his ribs. Shubman would stop training, dump the white balls back in the kit bag, and ask for a shiny red new one, the kind used for Test matches. Even while playing IPL, Shubman wasn't missing a chance to be England-ready. Gujarat Titans' assistant coach Naeem Amin is based out of London, and he was there to witness Shubman's quick ball-switch. 'And the bit that you will find interesting was him keen to practice just against a new ball. As soon as the new ball would become a little bit old, he'd change it for another new ball,' says Amin. As India's new Test No.4, Shubman knew that after facing the white-ball on flat tracks, he had to deal with the swinging-seaming red cherry in England. Amin also talks about the young skipper's hunger to learn and the desire to improve. 'His appetite always puts cricket first, and in that aspect, he is second to none. When Kane Williamson (former New Zealand captain and world's leading modern-day batsman) was in our team (GT), he was asking him about his thoughts all the time. 'How would you go about this or that? Why are you doing this drill? How does it benefit you?'.' England and New Zealand are miles apart, but on the cricketing map of conditions and pitches, they aren't that different. Williamson is in England playing county cricket these days, and turned up for the Lord's Test to find his one-time IPL teammate in the middle of the form of his life. He was pretty happy with what he saw. The pursuit of batting perfection has been Shubman's life goal since his wonder years in Punjab's border town of Fazilka. His father, a landed farmer, would pay kids in the neighbourhood Rs 100 to bowl at his son all day. When in his teens, Shubman knew that he could go back to tractors, fields and the family agriculture income, if cricket didn't work out. Like many others around him, the batting prodigy didn't lose sleep over the dilemma of academics or a career option. He would get up fresh with only cricket on his mind. Shubman would follow a punishing schedule, all through his Under-16 and Under-19 days, bat close to 6 to 8 hours every day. A typical day for him in Chandigarh, where he and his father moved from their village, would be about 3 to 4 hours of batting in the morning, a quick Amritsari lunch of patti or chhola kulcha, and again 3 to 4 hours of batting. Even when he made it to the Indian team, he was among the batsmen who batted the most at the nets. 'I want my body to take control of my mind … Not my mind taking control of me, seeding inside me self-doubts or getting carried away. Because I have practised so much for so many years, I want my body to take control of my mind. Let the muscle memory kick in. That's my challenge: use the mind to tell itself to stay quiet,' he once told The Indian Express. In England at the age 25, Shubman seemed to have achieved that batting nirvana. India's batting coach Sitanshu Kotak has been watching him closely for the past several months, and he could notice a change. 'From the Australia series to this series, I have seen his thought process and the way he batted. It is little different from what he has done in Australia … I would give a lot of credit to him for deciding what he wants to play, when he does not … Every batter, at some stage of their life, thinks and changes the way they bat in Test cricket. And Shubman seemed to be doing that brilliantly in this England series,' Kotak said. Before this series, Shubman's highest Test score was his 128 against Australia in 2023. As if he was given a Midas touch along with the captain's armband, everything that he touched in England has turned to gold. Between June 20 to July 6 – his fortnight of fortitude from the first to the third Test – Shubman registered three higher scores: 147, 269, 161. This was like the Swedish pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis clearing new heights every other day, raising the bar at will. It was in Birmingham that Shubman would find his Bodhi Tree, where he found enlightenment. In England, his 267 is being hailed as the most perfect knock he's ever played. Data shows that epic innings had a false shot percentage of 3.5 – that's the least for any innings in England since this statistic came into existence 20 years back. Since geniuses like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Pointing, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli are on the list below Shubman, the Birmingham innings is worthy to be framed in India's batting Hall of Fame. The near-perfect 267 was the outcome of his long penance, after mulling over many dismissals. It lifted him to a higher level, elevated him to the spiritual state where 'the body controls the mind' and the 'mind tells itself to stay quiet.' xxx England isn't an easy place to play cricket. In summer, the days are long; for cricketers, they are longer. They can suck the energy out of you, the weather can be murky, it can make you gloomy. This time, during the day, there was heat too. Consider the schedule of an Indian cricketer during the Lord's Test to understand this. The day would start at 6 am to be on the team bus that would start at 8 am. The match timing would be 11 am to 6.30 pm. By the time the team settles on the bus for the journey back to the team hotel, after press conferences and interviews, it would be 7.30 p.m. From Lord's to St James Court, where the team stayed, was easily a one and half hour long journey on the team bus, negotiating London's notorious traffic. After that the players would have a meal, some me-time and then hit the bed. Within hours, the alarm would go off once again. The schedule would be more or less the same for 25 days, plus there was the pressure of performance and fear of failure to deal with. For Gautam Gambhir, Shubman's biggest achievement as a first-time skipper was to remain unfazed all through this very demanding tour. 'This England team challenges a captain much more than Australia. They have many batsmen who can just run away with the game, and this puts pressure on the captain when the team is fielding. But not once has he looked shattered or lost,' he says. In Australia, there's just one Travis Head in the Test team who can mentally disintegrate an opposition captain and make the fielding side rudderless. In England, Bazballers are crawling out of the dressing room ever so frequently. It starts with openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the batting buccaneers who can brain freeze the best. Down the batting line-up, there is Harry Brook, Jamie Smith, and Ben Stokes – all three with swinging bats that can rattle any captain. The run machine Joe Root, with his solidity, seems to loom as a fulcrum. There have been occasions when Shubman has looked clueless, when he seemed to have lost the grip on the game but the team didn't give up. As was the case at The Oval when Brook and Root seemed to have the game in their pocket, India kept on coming back at them. And when they got a toe-hold in the door, they barged in as a commando unit on a covert operation. But as a member of the tour said, this series has been one of learning for the young skipper. 'See the way Ben Stokes leads his team, he has a few fielding templates, or call them plans, to get wickets. He keeps his fielders moving around. Suddenly, there would be a leg-side trap, next the off-side would have fielders in funky positions. Shubman needs to find his own templates and plan. He is young, he is hungry, he will learn,' a team official says. Gujarat Titans coach Amin gives an example of Shubman's thinking of a course correction as soon as he gets out. 'He is not the kind you will say I could have done this or that. After he has made a mistake as a batsman and got out, he has already dissected it on his walk back to the dugout. This is how quickly he realizes what he needs to do. There are times when there might be video analysis going on for another batter. He's keen to listen in, just in case he can upskill 0.5%,' he says. In the first Test in Leeds, he got out playing a reckless shot when on 147. It would have helped if he had stayed on longer. On the eve of the next Test, he would take the blame, promise to do better and an astonishing atonement waited for him. He would score a double hundred in the next innings. What was that compelling reason for the improved performance? 'Sometimes, especially when you are the captain, I think you need to lead by example so that whenever there is another player in that situation, you can command that player,' the team official said. This was a captain subtly asserting himself; this was a skipper earning the right to be the 'commander.' Former England captain Nasser Hussain, who had noted during the first Test that Gill 'lacked aura' would reassess his verdict at the end of the second Test: 'He (Gill) is not going to be a Kohli-type character. He's got a low heartbeat, but that can help. Look at this crowd here today. Look at all of India watching on. You may need someone just to calm the team.' As for Gambhir, he hasn't been over-interfering in the proceedings on the field. For long periods of stand-offs where wickets have been hard to come by, the captain has been changing fields, bowlers, and tactics without any obvious prompt from the dressing room. When Shubman is batting, the substitutes haven't randomly run on the field with gloves, or when the team is fielding, carrying unasked-for water bottles. Shubman does his thing, the way he likes. He does have counsel available on the field. Vice-captain Pant, seniors KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, and even Mohammed Siraj, to chip in – when asked for and even offer unsolicited advice. As the pundits from the commentators box, especially while assessing the new captain during the first Test have said 'Shubman is running the team by committee.' xxx Amin speaks about this same leadership trait in the captain, who is always willing to listen. 'Shubman is the kind of guy where a 15-year-old was there and he had an opinion on something and Shubman thought it would be useful to him, he would listen to him,' he says. Behind those soft features and dimpled smile, there is a steely resolve to stay ahead. 'The guy puts in hours… he puts in some serious hours to get better. Like I'm telling you about the red ball, how he's practising against it, even when he's in India. He's just trying to stay one step ahead,' says Amin. It is the same pursuit of perfection that started from the border town. Life came full circle for Shubman at The Oval. In a 2-2 verdict, it was tough to say if the runs brought the best out of his captaincy or the captaincy triggered an avalanche of runs.
Hindustan Times
13 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
‘Do you think jawans complain? You're playing…': Gavaskar tells Gambhir, 'Wipe that out of Indian cricket dictionary'
Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar on Monday claimed that fast bowler Mohammed Siraj 'debunked' the workload myth in Test cricket. Siraj played all five matches of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy and picked up 23 wickets (the most in the series) to inspire India to a 2-2 draw against England. Mohammed Siraj bowled 185.3 overs across the five Test matches against England There was considerable chatter around workload management in the Indian camp and how the fast bowlers would be rotated over the course of the series. While every other pacer got at least one game off, Siraj was the only one to feature in all five Tests against England. He bowled 185.3 overs across nine innings — the most by any bowler from either side — and finished as the leading wicket-taker with 23 scalps. His tally included two five-wicket hauls, one of which came in the series finale at The Oval. His nine-wicket match haul there helped India bowl England out for 367 in their chase of 374, sealing a famous win. Speaking to India Today, Sunil Gavaskar was effusive in his praise for Mohammed Siraj — not just for his performance, but for his dedication to the sport, the format, and his relentless drive to win the series for India at all costs. Gavaskar said the pacer single-handedly proved that 'workload' is a myth — calling it more of a 'mental thing' than a 'physical' one. 'There's always the saying that the bowlers win your matches but the fact of the matter is that you've also got to score the runs. So because India didn't score the runs, they lost those two matches. So yes, I think Siraj bowled his heart out and he debunked forever this business of workload. I hope that the word 'workload' goes out of the Indian Cricket dictionary. I've been saying that for a long time. For five Test matches nonstop, he bowled 6-over, 7-over, 8-over spells because the captain wanted it, and the country expected of him. And I think that is the one thing that we all should keep in mind that this workload is only a mental thing, not so much a physical thing,' he said. Gavaskar also cautioned head coach Gautam Gambhir and the team management to avoid buying into such narratives, citing Rishabh Pant's bravery in Manchester as an example. Pant had batted with a fractured toe and scored a crucial half-century that helped India secure a draw in the fourth Test, forcing the Oval decider. 'If you are going to succumb to people who are talking about workload, then you are never going to have your best players on the field. You've got to get them to a situation where you say , 'Hello, you are playing for your country, and when you are playing for your country, you got to forget the aches and pains in your muscles. That is what you mean on the border. Do you think the jawans complain about the cold, or what is the situation? They are there to give their lives for the country. Give your very best for the country. Don't worry about accident pains. What did Rishabh Pant show you? He came out bat with a fracture. That is the kind of thing you want to expect from your team. That is the, that's something that you want to expect. Don't go by the little injuries. It is an honor given to you amongst 140 crores of people, so you are so lucky to be able to represent India. And you should not take that lightly. And this what we have seen with Siraj, five Test matches, bowling non stop,' he added. Gavaskar clarifies: Jasprit Bumrah's absence due to injury, not workload Gavaskar clarified that his remarks on workload management were not directed at Jasprit Bumrah, who was rested for two matches during the England tour. He explained that the pacer's absence was due to an ongoing injury concern, not part of any rotation strategy. 'Not a problem in home series, but definitely in overseas series, where you're taking a team overseas, and the balance of the team can get affected. At home, you have ample time to call out to reserves, so it's not so much of an issue. But going overseas, you have to maybe look at that factor. But Bumrah was an injury issue, not a workload thing. He's had a serious injury. And so therefore I think that also has to be taken into consideration. When he played the two Test matches, he took two fifers. India might not have won, but he took those wickets. So you mustn't forget what a wonderful bowler he is,' Gavaskar said. Bumrah suffered a back injury during the tour of Australia earlier this year, which ruled him out of action until mid-April. The selectors, in consultation with the BCCI medical team, later decided that Bumrah would play just three matches in England to manage his injury.
News18
37 minutes ago
- News18
13 Huge Records That Make Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy Historic
1/13 Most runs in an India vs England Test series: Shubman Gill scored 754 runs in five Tests, breaking Graham Gooch's record of 752 (1990) for the most runs in a bilateral Test series between the two nations. Most runs for India as captain in a Test series: Gill surpassed Sunil Gavaskar's 732 to become India's highest run-scorer as captain in a Test series; only Don Bradman (810) has more as captain. First batter to score 700+ runs in a SENA series: Gill became the first Asian batter to score over 700 runs in a Test series in SENA countries, breaking Virat Kohli's record of 692 in Australia (2014-15). Highest individual score by an Indian Test captain: Gill's 269 at Edgbaston broke Virat Kohli's record of 254 to register the highest individual Test score by an Indian captain. First Asian captain to hit a double ton in SENA: Gill became the first Asian captain to score a double century in a Test in SENA countries, surpassing Dilshan's 193 at Lord's in 2011. Most runs in a Test match by an away batter: Gill scored 430 runs (269+161) in the second Test, breaking Mark Taylor's record of 426 for most runs by a visiting batter in a single Test. First England captain with a century and a 5-fer in same Test: Ben Stokes became the first English skipper—and fifth overall—to score a century and take a five-wicket haul in the same Test match. First Indian stumper with twin Test tons: Rishabh Pant became the first Indian wicketkeeper to score centuries in both innings of a Test match, doing so in the series opener at Headingley. Joe Root's historic run in the series: With 537 runs, Root became the second-highest run-getter in Test history (13,543), overtaking Dravid, Kallis, and Ponting—only behind Sachin Tendulkar. Root's other milestones: He became the first to score 6000 runs in the WTC and now has the most Test centuries (10) at home against a single team—India. Bumrah's SENA milestone: Jasprit Bumrah became the first Asian to take 150 Test wickets in SENA countries, achieving the feat in just 61 innings and 32 Tests. 7000-plus runs in the series: The Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy saw 7000+ runs—only the second such series after the 1993 Ashes; India's 3809 runs and 470 boundaries were both records. India's slimmest and biggest Test wins: India's 6-run win at The Oval was their narrowest-ever in Tests, while the 336-run triumph at Edgbaston was their biggest overseas win by runs.
