Crispin Chhetri, Joakim Alexandersson reflect on preparations leading up to AFC tournaments

India will participate in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and the AFC U20 Women’s Asian Cup next year.

Crispin Chhetri, the Indian senior women’s team, and Joakim Alexandersson, the U20 Women’s team coach, shared their thoughts on the future of women’s football in India. These are exciting days for Women’s football, with both the senior women’s team and the U20 women’s team qualified for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and the U20 Women’s team, respectively.

In the press conference held on Friday, both coaches highlighted their plans in the months to come in the lead-up to the Asian tournaments. India will participate in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup from March 1 to 21, 2026. At the same time, the U20 Women’s Asian Cup will start on April 1.

The Senior women’s team might travel to Europe

Crispin Chhetri shared the plans that are in the offing for the senior women’s team. He said, “from October onwards we’ll be hosting a camp maybe 15 days every month and finally when we go for AFC Women’s Asian Cup then we’ll have a longer period of camp.”

“Maybe we’ll have a big team and a good team in October. In November, we might go to Europe, and in January, according to the weather conditions of Australia, maybe we’ll travel to Australia earlier, or maybe to a similar kind of condition where we’ll go and play friendly matches.”

The U20 Women’s teams to have games in Slovenia

“First of all, we go to Slovenia in October now for um exposure games against the good European opponents,” said Joakim Alexandersson on the plans of the U20 women’s team as they gear up for the AFC U20 Women’s Asian Cup Qualifiers.

Further expanding on the quality game time, he replied, “We will use the FIFA windows like the senior team to prepare for the tournament for more games, and for camps and uh we will also invite some uh teams to India to play good games. So that’s how it is. We will be able to play something around 10 to 12 good games.”

Sharing his thoughts on the mentality of his team, Joakim said, “It is to have fun from the beginning, but then it all ends up that you want to win games, and this is what you have to learn players at a more early stage that they want to have this competition in training sessions, especially in women’s football.

So yeah, that’s for sure. I try to implement that in the training sessions, make sure that everyone wants to come to the session to compete in all the exercises, not only to be there to be present, they have to actually do something about their development, during the sessions, also not only to come there to participate.”