Stephen Constantine, the head coach of the Indian national team, has released his squad for the 2018 SAFF Suzuki Cup which kicked off from Tuesday, September 4 onwards. The defending champions will begin their campaign on Wednesday against Sri Lanka at the Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka.

The squad is replete with a host of stars from the Hero Indian Super League (ISL), most notably - Vishal Kaith, Subhasish Bose, Anirudh Thapa and Lallianzuala Chhangte. Ahead of the tournament, Constantine spoke of the squad’s time spent training in Australia as well as the quality of opposition at the tournament. “We're coming from a very effective camp in Australia,” he said. “As we have spoken before, we had three very different sorts of games and our boys have worked very hard to make a point there. Facing some of the good sides in this tournament would be a real challenge for us and this is the best scenario to test ourselves.”

The SAFF Cup will serve as the ideal opportunity for Constantine to assess some of the younger players, who have been selected, ahead of the AFC Asian Cup 2019 in January. “Obviously these boys have set their target to represent the senior team in the future. But if we don’t provide them with opportunities, how would we be able to know about their capabilities? We have a set of confident players for the Asian Cup, but we must continue developing more players for the coming days. That’s the primary challenge for these set of boys," Constantine stated.

After their game against Sri Lanka, India will go up against the Maldives on Sunday, September 9.

Here is the full list of players for the SAFF Suzuki Cup 2018: 

Goalkeepers:

Vishal Kaith, Kamaljit Singh, Sukhdev Patil

Defenders: 

Davinder Singh, Salam Ranjan Singh, Sarthak Golui, Subhasish Bose, Mohd. Sajid Dhot, Jerry Lalrinzuala

Midfielders: 

Nikhil Poojary, Vinit Rai, Germanpreet Singh, Anirudh Thapa, Lallianzuala Chhangte, Ashique Kuruniyan, Vignesh D

Forwards: 

Sumeet Passi, Hitesh Sharma, Manvir Singh, Farukh Choudhary