KOCHI: When Stephen Constantine came back to India for a second coaching stint with the national team last year after a successful spell with Rwanda, he knew he would be in for a rougher ride. Now after one year and a World Cup qualifying campaign in which India are placed last in their group going into the final match against Turkmenistan here on Tuesday, the Englishman is not overly optimistic about his team’s chances. “I think it will be difficult. We are playing a team ranked much higher than us but we are at home and we will have good support from fans here,” Constantine told TOI ahead of the match.Talismanic captain Sunil Chhetri, who hasn’t recovered from his groin injury, is likely to miss this match too to make matters worse for a side plagued by injuries. “Sunil is, I would say 60-40 not to play,” said Constantine. India are already missing the services of experienced striker Robin Singh due to a knee injury.Constantine puts the blame on player management at club level for Indian team’s injury crisis. “If the players are not doing physical work at their clubs, we can’t overstretch them in the two or three days that we get them for. That can only lead to injuries,” sighed the 53-year-old coach.Despite, the 0-4 defeat against Iran in their previous game, Constantine feels that his team did reasonably well against their far superior opponents. “We were playing a team that has been together for a long time and their players had a lot of outside exposure. Even the Iran league is very strong. So I think we fought well, but it was always going to be tough against Iran,” said Constantine.Taking stock of his second term with the Indian team, Constantine said that he was not expecting to pull off miracles in a short span of time with a team that has consistently underachieved at the world stage. “What have we done in the last five years to expect qualification? It’s like doing well in exam and passing. And we haven’t even studied for the exam. It’s not an accident that we are ranked 160th and Iran 44th,” Constantine said.A theme of Constantine’s style of coaching has been his propensity to blood in youngsters to the side. When striker Udanta Singh took the field against Iran, he became the 23rd player in the last one year to make his debut for India. “We hadn’t reached the Asian qualifiers for eight years. We needed to completely revamp the national side and bring in more youth,” said Constantine The biggest achievement for India under Constantine was the SAFF Cup win in January. Though he had always maintained that India should be competing more with Central Asian nations than South Asian ones, Constantine cherished that victory achieved under adverse circumstances. “We had no practice and even then everyone expected India to win it. We managed it with kids and that was most pleasing,” he said.Constantine has always been an advocate of Indian football having just one domestic league and a calendar that aligns to FIFA. Quite naturally, he welcomed the recent discussions on the merger of the I-League and the Indian Super League (ISL).