Nepal rests hope on Young players as football enters transition period

With senior players arrested for alleged match fixing incident, Nepal rests its hopes on Young players for the upcoming SAFF Championship 2015.

Rohit Chand. Pic: ANFA

Newly appointed Head Coach Patrick Aussems had just taken charge of two training sessions and he had the team’s skipper, vice captain and most experienced goalkeeper taken away. In this condition, the Belgian born coach has called up 39 players in the national squad with most of the players in their early 20s. The coach watched the second half of the league and based on the performance of the players, he has resumed the training.

Biraj Maharjan, who is in his mid 20s is the most capped and experienced player in the national squad while Rohit Chand and Rabin Shrestha are the others to follow him, and they were part of the U22 setup that took part in previous edition of AFC U22 tournament. The number of players from U19 squad alone speaks the volume about the current crop of players. Six players from the victorious U19 team are in the squad excluding Hemanta Thapa Magar who had bad tournament and could not perform well in the league.