When a senior official of a federation wishes luck to it's affiliated team, the morale of the players do get boosted and on Thursday Praful Patel, President of All India Football Federation (AIFF) tried to do just that, only to mix-up tournaments. As the team prepared for their play-off match in the 2019 AFC Asian Cup Football Qualifiers against Laos, he tweeted, "India gears up to face Laos in the World Cup Qualifiers today. Expecting a spirited performance from the boys. #AIFF #IndianFootball."

Sadly, the tournament that India was participating in was the 2019 AFC Asian Cup Football Qualifiers and not the WC qualifiers.

The Blue Tigers, as the Indian football team is fondly called had already been eliminated from 2018 World Cup Qualifiers, having ended at the bottom of the group. Now as the bottom-placed teams of each group of the preliminary round and a few other lowest-ranked countries of the continent are required to feature in these play-off matches to give them a chance to make it to the qualifying tournament of the 2019 Asian Cup, India were up against Laos, but it seems that the AIFF President, who is also the Vice President of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) mixed up the two events.

He faced massive backlash for this post, with many saying that Patel doesn't deserve to be in the post. Later the tweet was deleted.

Meanwhile, Jeje Lalpekhlua scored the winner as India beat Laos by a solitary goal to put themselves in a strong position of qualifying for the 2019 AFC Asian Cup Qualifiers.