4 min learnNew DelhiUp to date: Jan 30, 2026 11:10 PM IST
The 2026 AFC Ladies’s Asian Cup affords a pathway to the Ladies’s World Cup, however Amelia Valverde is aware of that for India, success gained’t be quantified simply by the scoreline.
The 39-year-old Costa Rican, appointed as India’s ladies’s head coach earlier this month, has seen firsthand what qualifying for 2 World Cups did for the game in her personal nation.
Costa Rica performed its first ladies’s worldwide match on April 16, 1991, when Valverde was simply 4 years outdated. About 23 years later, she coached Costa Rica to its first-ever Ladies’s World Cup look, and in 2023, led them to the event once more.
“If the ladies go and do effectively within the Ladies’s Asian Cup, every thing can be completely different for girls’s soccer in India,” Valverde informed The Indian Categorical from Turkey, the place the workforce is coaching forward of the event. The Ladies’s Asian Cup can be held in Australia from March 1. India are scheduled to journey to Perth on February 10 for extra pleasant matches earlier than enjoying their opening match in opposition to Vietnam on March 4
Though Valverde has taken cost of the workforce, she has but to set foot in India and may not accomplish that till after India’s Asian Cup marketing campaign. “I’m right here in Turkey with the ladies. I haven’t been to India but. I’ve completed 5 periods and a few pleasant matches,” she stated.
Whereas males’s soccer in India has struggled within the final couple of years amid court docket battles, boardroom disputes, and fractured league construction, the ladies’s workforce has quietly made historical past by qualifying for the Asian Cup through the qualification route for the primary time. Ranked seventieth on this planet, India shocked Forty sixth-placed Thailand to earn their spot.
Valverde believes the workforce is aiming for greater than tangible outcomes. “It’s historical past,” she stated of India’s qualification. “I do know soccer in India has had a troublesome 12 months, however that isn’t the story of this workforce. In July, I noticed a courageous workforce, a workforce that needed to make historical past for this nation — they usually did. Now they’ve a chance to make historical past once more, not simply with outcomes.
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“All of you speak about World Cup qualification, however it’s greater than that. These gamers are doing one thing completely different for the ladies of their nation. That is essential. I’ve been working with them for a few week, and as I stated, this workforce has one thing particular.”
But the workforce just isn’t proof against the AIFF’s uncommon methods. Valverde’s appointment was introduced on January 20, lower than two months earlier than India’s opening match in opposition to Vietnam.
“We’ve got simply over a month to arrange for the event. We’ve got to do the most effective work on this time. We are able to’t management that we didn’t begin earlier, however we are able to management what we do every day from right here. I discovered the workforce desires to work arduous and put together in addition to attainable,” she stated.
This season, the Indian Ladies’s League (IWL) has been divided into two phases. The present nationwide camp and the Asian Cup marketing campaign fall within the break earlier than the second section. In whole, the season will encompass simply 27 matches. For comparability, every workforce performs 22 matches in England’s Ladies’s Tremendous League every season.
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Valverde believes a powerful efficiency in Australia might have far-reaching results. “All people desires outcomes, however it’s greater than that. Now, many younger women are wanting as much as them, and the nation should be good about this. The league will enhance, and extra ladies have to play soccer,” she stated. “Completely, certainly one of our targets is World Cup qualification, nevertheless it’s greater than that. We’ll do our greatest on this month of preparation, take a baggage stuffed with desires to Australia, and see what occurs.”
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