New Delhi: Khalid Jamil must have forgotten the proverb ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ when he switched to an ultra-defensive mode far too early and paid the price in India’s 3-0 defeat to defending champions Iran in the CAFA Nations Cup on Monday.

With three holding midfielders in front a four-man backline, India managed to go into the break without conceding, but conceded six minutes after Khalid Jamil switched to a five-man defence at Hisor Central Stadium.

Jamil realised his error 15 minutes later to recall Chinglesana Singh to the bench but by that time India had recoiled further back into a shell, emerging out of which was beyond them.

Till that substitution India had created a jungle of legs on the edge of the area to deny Iran a clear sight at goal. Whenever crosses were floated in from both flanks, Sandesh Jhingan and Anwar Ali headed them out and pushed up to cut out the space created for falling back.

But Sana’s introduction altered that dynamic as India were undone by a centre from the right channel into the far post, the ball bobbled off the back of a retreating Rahul Bheke to fall kindly into the path of Amirhossein inside the six-yard box just on the hour mark.

It nullified all the good work that India had painstakingly done up until then, seeing very little of the ball but defending in two blocks of four players.

No muscle in attack

Whenever they got the ball, they struggled to keep it and could only punt it long and high in the absence of a proper idea of how to get behind the Iranian defence line.

With such a game-plan not only scoring for the first time since Jarnail Singh’s goal in the 1966 Asian Games against a team ranked 113 slots above them looked remote, coming out unscratched after 90 minutes appeared difficult too, yet India seemed to have found a way to absorb whatever Iran did to put pressure until that needless substitution.

India didn’t have much of an attacking outlet from the beginning and after conceding they brought on Mahesh Singh, Jithin MS and Manvir Singh for greater thrust and pace upfront.

Iran too sensed an opportunity to score more and called up Alireza Jahanbaksh and Mehdi Taremi from the bench. While the nippy Jithin and Mahesh added pace they didn’t have composure that Taremi and Jahanbaksh showed in the two late goals.

Taremi’s ability to draw defenders towards him while turning towards goal and release forward runners created the second goal as Jahanbaksh’s shot rebounded off Gurpreet Singh Sandhu for Ali Aliporghara to stab it in on 89 minutes minuted after another substitute Ahmad Gohari had danced past his markers with a diagonal run to rattle the post.

In the last minute of the six added minutes, Jahanbaksh’s through ball caught the Indian defenders napping as Taremi beat the offside trap to latch onto it and drive it past an advancing Gurpreet.

As only the group winner qualifies for the final, Jamil’s big task is to find a way to India would now have to beat Afghanistan by a big margin in their final group game on September 4 and hope hosts Tajikistan, who lost 2-1 to Jamil’s boys, beat Iran, who had won 3-1 against Afghanistan in their opening game.