{"id":10963,"date":"2021-10-15T17:14:23","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T11:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/?p=159693"},"modified":"2021-10-15T17:14:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T11:44:23","slug":"india-eyes-8th-title-as-they-take-on-nepal-in-the-saff-championship-final-on-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/football\/india-eyes-8th-title-as-they-take-on-nepal-in-the-saff-championship-final-on-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"India eyes 8th title as they take on Nepal in the SAFF Championship final on Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a forgettable start to the campaign and a tipsy-turvy tournament, the Indian football team has finally made it to the finals of the SAFF tournament. Now the only question on everyone\u2019s mind is, will India finally end their trophy drought under the leadership of Igor Stimac.<\/p>\n<p>India started the tournament with a win against two very nominal and small teams such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This severely jeopardized their chances of making it to the finals of this year\u2019s tournament. However, they had a great turnaround during the game against Nepal in which they won 1-0. Later they came up against the toughest opponents in the form of Maldives and defeated them with a margin of 3 goals to 1. Courtesy of the two goals of Captain Chhetri who so far has scored 4 goals in this tournament, India was able to qualify for the finals, where they will face Nepal once again.<\/p>\n<p>Although it won\u2019t be an easy one to win. Nepal who currently resides 61 places below India, at the 168<sup>th<\/sup> position has proven that they\u2019re a tough nut to crack. Also, that when they take on the field, they mean business. The singularity of their mindset to win has been something one really can\u2019t miss out on. They have beaten the crowd\u2019s favourite Maldives and drawn with Bangladesh to qualify for the final.<\/p>\n<p>India on the other will come into the match with a psychological advantage. They have beaten the Himalayan team once and will look forward to repeating the feat on the 16<sup>th<\/sup> of October to win their 8<sup>th<\/sup> SAFF championship title.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">All about \u2018you and ourselves\u2019, as <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BlueTigers?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#BlueTigers<\/a> \ud83d\udc2f prepare for SAFF C\u2019ship Final<\/p>\n<p>Read \ud83d\udc49 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qZEIDBDveE\">https:\/\/t.co\/qZEIDBDveE<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SAFFChampionship2021?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SAFFChampionship2021<\/a> \ud83c\udfc6 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BackTheBlue?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#BackTheBlue<\/a> \ud83d\udc99 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/IndianFootball?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#IndianFootball<\/a> \u26bd <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/medg3ypDyQ\">pic.twitter.com\/medg3ypDyQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Indian Football Team (@IndianFootball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IndianFootball\/status\/1448619662506291202?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 14, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India on the other will come into the match with a psychological advantage. They have beaten the Himalayan team once, and will look forward to repeating the feat on the 16th of October to win their 8th SAFF championship title. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":33439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[427,2571,252,2676,2800,127],"class_list":["post-10963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-bangladesh","tag-igor-stimac","tag-maldives","tag-nepal-football-team","tag-saff-championship","tag-sunil-chhetri"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}