INDIAN HEAD COACH Stephen Constantine was all smiles after India beat Macau 2-0 tonight. It wasn't the most exciting of wins, but it was one they needed.
After the match, as he faced the local Macau media, he said he didn't mind that the game wasn't a goalfest, and gave the Macau team credit for holding on for much of the game,
"Look, I don't disrespect the Macau team. I never did. When we came here I was asked how many goals we'd score. I thought it would be disrespectful to the Macau coach and team to just assume it would be an easy game. As you could see it wasn't. We're happy with the two goals we got, we needed this win."
Asked by TFG what he thought of Balwant Singh's second half performance, the gaffer readily shared credit for the half time substitution,
"I spoke about this with my assistant coach Venkatesh. I have to give him credit for that. The boy did exactly what he needed to do. He could have scored four, but I'll take the two. I'm very pleased for him."
Afterwards, as TFG caught up with him on the way to the team bus, we asked him whether he had anything special lined up for the Indian team - some new phase of experimentation or development - after India secure a place in the Asian Cup 2019. (Case in point: although Constantine brought six players from the India U-23 squad along for this match, other than the regular starter Udanta only Germanpreet made a brief cameo appearance, which is fairly low key for the coach in terms of bleeding youngsters in).
In reply, Constantine said,
"Look, I don't believe in showing all my cards beforehand. First, let's win. We need three more points, let's get into the Asian Cup, then we'll see."
The coach went into details about the game, and how it played out,
"It was a rare occasion where we had all the possession and the opponents were playing defensive. Usually it's the other way around. They had made it clear that they'd sit back and defend and try to get us on the counter so it was a question of us breaking that barrier."
With this win, India have come back to winning ways after the hiccup against Saint Kitts & Nevis. And they have almost a month's time before they face Palestine in an international friendly. Asked what he thought of the upcoming game (possibly being played in Gujarat), the coach said,
"It's going to be an important game for us ahead of the next Asian qualifier. Just like the matches against We needed the Tri-Series ahead of tonight's game because the players were coming off the summer break. Now they will go back to their clubs and we'll have them back three-four days before the match. So hopefully they'll be in good shape."
Constantine, of course, is no stranger to haggling with clubs for timely release of players. So what does he prefer, players coming off the summer or right out of a club's pre season camp? The coach laughed and said before walking off to the team bus,
"Depends on how much time they give me with them."
The issue of getting player availability during ISL and its pre-season has already muddied up India's World Cup Qualifiers campaign, something Constantine has extensively written about in his autobiography.
It remains to be seen how much time he gets with his players when the Blue Tigers face Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan in their last two Asian Cup qualifiers in the middle of the ISL/I-League parallel season.
So far, India have never managed to play an international friendly or held a sizeable preparatory camp in the middle of an ISL season. So Constantine's visible relief on India breaking the deadlock against Macau tonight, which gives the Blue Tigers a chance to ensure a place in Asian Cup before the ISL kicks off, perhaps has a bigger significance than the usual joy of a coach upon winning a match.