Pictures BS News Agency.
Bibhash Lodh, BS News Agency: Before celebrating Durga Puja, the best festival of Bengalis in October, Bengali football fans are getting a chance to immerse themselves in the football festival. The Indian senior men's football team will face the Brazilian national team in a friendly match on October 3 at Yuva Bharati. The preparations for that have already begun. Representatives of the Brazilian team have visited Kolkata and completed a one-time observation. They will come again to check the final arrangements. Meanwhile, the Indian Football Federation has announced that Kolkata is getting another big international friendly match. The Indian football team will face the two-time world champion Uruguay at Yuva Bharati on October 6.
The opportunity to play against the big team of the Indian football team is coming soon. They will face Panama, ranked 44th in the FIFA rankings, at the Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru on September 26. The Indian team won the match against the United Arab Emirates 1-0 in 2001. Then, after 25 years, Bengaluru is getting the opportunity to host a big match again.
Indian footballers have not had the opportunity to play against a team so high in the FIFA rankings in recent times. The Indian team will play against 5-time World Cup champions Brazil for the first time. However, India has played against Uruguay before. In 1982, in the inaugural Nehru Gold Cup at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, Uruguay not only played against India, they also won the championship by defeating China in the final. Uruguay defeated India 3-1 in the league stage match. Uruguay's World Cup winners Enzo Francescoli and Venácio Ramos impressed everyone with their brilliant play in that team.
Uruguay is currently ranked 20th in the FIFA rankings. However, Bielsa's coaching of Uruguay in the FIFA 2026 World Cup could not overcome the group stage barrier. Taking responsibility for the failure, he stepped down as the head coach of the Uruguay national team. World Cup winner Diogo Forlan was appointed as the coach in his place. Forlan had a special contribution behind taking Uruguay to the semi-finals after 40 years in the semi-finals of the 2010 South Africa World Cup. And so, despite losing to Germany in the end and finishing fourth in that World Cup, Forlan won the Golden Ball Award. This is not Forlan's first visit to India. He previously played for Mumbai City FC in the ISL in 2016. Even in the match against ATK at the Rabindra Sarovar in Kolkata, Bengali football fans were impressed by Forlan's magic feet.