Sumeet Passi, Germanpreet Singh among six players released from national camp

Stimac has been coming out quite the stern taskmaster as the national coach and has already started cutting down the 37-man squad that was announced for the trials days after he was appointed in that position. His exclusions include Passi, Nandha Kumar, Redeem Tlang, Bikramjit Singh, Germanpreet, and Kaith, and quite surprisingly, some of them were former Stephen Constantine’s regulars.

While Passi has struggled to keep his starting spot regularly in Cesar Ferrando’s Jamshedpur FC, Germanpreet, too, hasn’t found his place in the starting eleven of Chennaiyin FC every time. The likes of Tlang and Kaith have had decent seasons with their respective clubs NorthEast United FC and FC Pune City.

Stimac now has 31 players left in the squad and it will be further trimmed down to 23 before India leave for Thailand where they would face Curacao in the first match of the King’s Cup on June 5.

INDIA 31-MAN PROBABLE SQUAD

GOALKEEPERS: Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, Amrinder Singh, Kamaljit Singh.

DEFENDERS: Pritam Kotal, Nishu Kumar, Rahul Bheke, Salam Ranjan Singh, Sandesh Jhingan, Adil Khan, Anwar Ali, Subhasish Bose, Narayan Das.

MIDFIELDERS: Udanta Singh, Jackichand Singh, Brandon Fernandes, Anirudh Thapa, Raynier Fernandes, Dhanpal Ganesh, Pronay Halder, Rowllin Borges, Vinit Rai, Sahal Abdul, Amarjit Singh, Lallianzuala Chhangte, Komal Thatal, Michael Soosairaj.

FORWARDS: Balwant Singh, Sunil Chhetri, Jobby Justin, Farukh Choudhary, Manvir Singh.