India take on South Korea in AFC U-16 championship opener

New Delhi, Oct 3 (UNI) India will take on Korea Republic in their opening match of the Group B of the AFC Under-16 Championship at Tashkent tomorrow.

A total of 16 teams divided into four groups are participating in the championship. Syria and Indonesia are the other two teams lined up in Group B.

Earlier, India had beaten Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and drew with Iraq in their qualification round in Dammam to make it to the final round.

South Korea is the winners of the 2002 edition of the championship. India, who will be making their fifth appearance, have qualified for the final round for the first time.

India Under 16 team has given a good and consistent performance during their exposure tours in the last 15 months in Germany, US and more recently to Manchester where they have showed signs of improvements.

India's chief coach Colin Toal was confident and said the boys should maintain their positive frame of mind, enjoy the match and should only focus on tomorrow's match against Korea.

Group B: India's fixtures: Oct 4: vs Korea Republic Oct 6: vs Syria Oct 8: vs Indonesia Team: Goalkeepers: Abhishek Das, Gurpreet Singh Sandhu and Jayanta Paul.

Defenders: Ajit Dhurva Bhoir, Vikas Guila, Asish Chhetri, Deepak Devrani, Sumit Rawat, Tonmoy Ghosh, Vishal Kumar.

Midfielders: Akshay Mall, Harpreet Bedi, Bikramjit Singh, Shilton D'Silva, O Lalrindika, Sunny, Tirthankar Sarkar, Ongnam Milan Singh.

Forwards: Manandeep, Abhishek Das, Malsawmfela, Prem Kumar, Vivek Kumar UNI RAR RJ RK1705