SAFF Championship 2023: India and Kuwait will be going up against each other for the title clash at the South Asian Football Federation Championship final. The teams share an unbeaten run in the recent games but one of them will lose their streak in the final on July 4 in Bengaluru. India are not defeated in the entire year and Kuwait have an unbeaten run for 10 games coming into the showdown clash.
The SAFF tournament is a South Asian regional tournament that is played by national teams and is governed by SAFF. There are seven teams in the tournament. Those seven nations are - Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Afghanistan was also part of the association but they left in 2015.
Why Kuwait and Lebanon participated in the tournament?
Interestingly, both Kuwait and Lebanon are not part of the SAFF nations and have never played in the event in the past. Sri Lanka, who are a member of the tournament was banned by the world body FIFA in January 2023. Also, for getting tough competition in the tournament, Kuwait and Lebanon were sent invitations for the SAFF Cup 2023. And it came out to be true with both the teams challenging the original members. Both the teams were the toppers from the two groups of the event, pushing both India and Bangladesh to second place.
The teams were divided into two groups - A and B. Group A featured India, Kuwait, Nepal and Pakistan, whereas the other group featured Lebanon, Maldives, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
As per rankings before the commencement of the tournament, Lebanon was the highest-ranked team - 99, followed by India - 101. Kuwait (143), Nepal (174), Pakistan (195), Maldives (154), Bhutan (185) and Bangladesh (192) were on the lower ranks but Kuwait is touted to be much better than their rankings.
