The Indian Football team displayed, what was probably their best performance under Igor Stimac, restricting a dangerous Syria outfit to a 1-1 draw in the final round-robin match of the 2019 Hero Intercontinental Cup held at the EKA Arena in Ahmedabad on Tuesday. The 18-year-old Jamshedpur FC centre-back, Narender Gahlot scored in the first half for India, which seemed as though it would be enough, until Faris Alkhatib converted from the spot to earn a share of the spoils.

After the match, Stimac and Gahlot attended the post-match press conference. The Croat began by analysing the defender’s strong showing and said, “Every goal, whoever scores, comes as a team effort. I am so happy for him because the first game was not too good. We were not too happy about that because I know how much he can do.”

“A boy like him, with the quality he has got in his legs, I want him to play as confidently as today. To go up, to score goals, to show to the Indian people that we have young quality players who are the future of the country. Today was fantastic and we can be proud of that. Congratulations to the players.”

Elaborating his thoughts on whether he had achieved his targets for the tournament, the 51-year-old stated, “I look at this tournament just as I looked before. I was very clear saying that we are going to use this tournament to find out everything about each candidate. That’s why each one of them was playing.”

“We know our way. We know which way we need to go, how to do it, how to work to get where you want us to be. I know that’s it not easy losing games but that’s what I said earlier. Changing the way India was playing before. Its about lots of hard work, lots of great work, and lots of sacrifice. And the results might suffer on this way, but it’s the only way.”

He added: “Now we have Narender, now we have Vinit Rai. We have many more of them to come. If I as a coach don’t take risk and responsibility to give them the chance to play, nobody will. I have strong belief, I know football, I know how much they can do on the training pitch. There will be ups and downs. But that’s football. It’s the only way to make good players.”

Stimac was then asked about which opponents the country should fear going into the FIFA 2022 World Cup qualifiers scheduled for September. The former Croatia boss exercised both caution and confidence and said, "We need to respect everyone. Not only the teams from that pot. The teams from the fifth pot. This tournament shows you that football is very strange game.”

“In the final here, two teams who are lowest in the FIFA ranking in this tournament will be playing. So, everyone can beat everyone. We don’t fear anyone. We respect everyone. That’s the way I’m going to teach our team, how to behave. We have to respect everyone. We are just at the beginning of our journey.”

Gahlot meanwhile, dedicated his goal to his coach and teammates, stating, “I would like to congratulate the coach and the whole team for this score. They have supported me always and the coach has shown trust in me and given me the chance. I did well today.”

Assyrians boss Fajr Ibrahim, on his part, felt satisfied with the overall display of his players in the tournament. He said, “We play football for results. You have to score to win. We had the chance to score. Similar happened against Tajikistan. We controlled everything but we gave the opponents the chances to score against us. I’m satisfied because I came here with a new team. Some of them were playing for the first time for the national team. I think we got some new players for the future.”