India's newly appointed football head coach Igor Stimac is keen to set high standards for his players, saying each and every player has to fight for their place in the team.
Stimac has been conducting a training camp in New Delhi for the final team before the King's Cup in Thailand. Every player will go on their performance including India's all-time highest goalscorer Sunil Chhetri.
"Of course, Sunil (Chhetri) is very valuable to our team. He is a role model to these young players who are knocking on the door. He has played so many games; he is so experienced and has scored so many goals. But as well as others, he needs to fight for a place in the team," goal.com quoted Stimac, as saying.
The Croatian who appointed as the Indian head coach on May 15 is expecting players to perform best to their potential in the upcoming King's Cup.
"We speak every day. I speak with all our players every day. That's my approach. I need to do that. I need to get information from them," said Stimac.
He further added that he was quite impressed with the attitude of all the players in the camp, especially the senior figures.
"I expect not only from Sunil, from Gurpreet (Singh Sandhu), from (Sandesh) Jhingan as well to be a role model to young players in a positive way. And not in a negative way because they are the ones who are looked at (by upcoming talents). Young players always look at what Sunil is doing, what Jhingan is doing. So I'm quite happy with their behaviour until now and I strongly believe that we will work together as much as he (Sunil) did before," added Stimac.
Apart from India and the host Thailand, other teams namely Vietnam and Curacao will compete. India's previous participation in the tournament was in 1977.
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