India go down to USA in U-17 Cup opener

New Delhi, Oct. 6: Hosts India got off to a bad start at the FIFA U-17 World Cup, losing their opening match to the USA 0-3 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here on Friday.

USA captain Josh Sargent scored the opening goal with a 31st minute penalty. India improved their forward play after going down but despite some good passing, failed to find the killer ball. Defender Chris Durkin doubled USA’s lead in the 51st minute while Andrew Carleton scored the third to put gloss over the scoreline.

For India, Komal Thatal and Aniket Jadhav impressed while Dheeraj Singh, in the Indian goal, did brilliantly for the hosts.

Despite claims of the organisers and the government, India’s maiden match witnessed a lukewarm response.

Many sections of the stadium were empty and the areas occupied by the fans had vacant seats.

The lower tier was mostly occupied but not full. The upper tier of the stadium had many vacant areas. Especially, one upper section to the left of the VIP area was almost vacant. This is contrary to the government’s claim that the stadium will be full for India’s first FIFA World Cup game.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi graced the historic moment when he greeted players of both the teams before the kick off.

Modi, who arrived at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium after the first match of the day between Ghana and Colombia, went out from the VIP dais to the playing pitch and shook hands with both the teams.

The Prime Minister stood on the ground when the national anthems of India and US were sung.

A few days earlier Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore had said that the tickets sales were stopped to allot tickets to children of select schools.

To add to it, the online tickets were not available a day before the match.

To ensure that the turnout for the hosts’ moment of history does not leave any red faces, the Local Organising Committee had distributed 26,750 tickets to the Sports Ministry for free.

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