India’s under-15s got Senegal and Cameroon in Baku, and 12,000 players were watched to pick the 14
India are in Group K of the inaugural FIFA U15 World Cup and Festival alongside Bahrain, Cameroon, Grenada, Laos and Senegal. The matches are 8v8, and no team is eliminated after the group stage.
Sep 17, 2026
India’s under-15 boys found out on Thursday who they will be playing in Baku next month, and the answer is Bahrain, Cameroon, Grenada, Laos and Senegal. That is Group K of the inaugural FIFA U15 World Cup and Festival, a tournament with 191 national teams in it, eight players a side, and nobody going home after the group stage.
Five matches in three days
The qualification stage runs from 24 to 26 October at the Hovsan Competition Complex, and India play all five group games inside it. They open against Laos on the Saturday at 11.45am IST. Sunday brings a double: Cameroon at 10.30am and Grenada at 5.15pm. Monday is heavier still, with Bahrain at 2.15pm and Senegal at 9pm, and the two games are on different pitches.
Five games in three days would be punishing at 11-a-side over 90 minutes. This is not that. Matches are 8v8, played over two 20-minute halves with a five-minute break, on pitches measuring 68 metres by 50, with rolling substitutions allowed throughout. A 14-player squad can rotate through a schedule like that.
Nobody is knocked out in October
The format is the part worth understanding, because it does not work the way a FIFA tournament usually does. Teams were not made to qualify. Every member association was invited, 191 accepted, and they have been sorted into 32 groups of six or seven. Three points for a win, one for a draw, the usual arithmetic.
Then, instead of sending most of them home, FIFA sends all of them into a tournament stage on 28 and 29 October, with group results deciding the tier a side lands in. Winners meet winners, runners-up meet runners-up, and so on down. Tier finals are on 30 October.
The whole thing runs to 943 matches across 20 pitches over six competition days. Players have to have been born in 2011 or 2012.
Twelve thousand watched, fourteen going
The scale of what the All India Football Federation did to fill those 14 shirts is easy to miss in a line about a group draw. Sixty scouts assessed more than 12,000 players from the 2011 and 2012 age groups across the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, working through more than 20 competitions: the AIFF Elite and Junior Youth Leagues, national championships, school tournaments, state and district leagues.
“More than 12,000 players were assessed across the last two seasons, with scouts working across competitions and different parts of the country to identify talent,” AIFF deputy secretary general M Satyanarayan said.
That funnel narrowed to central trials, 160 players called to Bhubaneswar and 205 assessed in Hyderabad. The survivors have been in camp at the Centre for Sports Excellence in Bengaluru since 16 August under Bibiano Fernandes, with Surinder Singh assisting, and players are still arriving in batches to be looked at.
The squad is not picked yet
Fernandes has not named his 14. The camp is still in its trial phase, and the plan is to play international friendlies at home before the team flies out. Teams arrive in Baku on 22 October and get one official training day on the 23rd before the football starts.
Fernandes has spent most of the last decade with India’s age-group sides. He took them to the AFC U16 Championship in 2018 and the AFC U17 Asian Cup in 2023, and he is currently also in charge of the U17 team preparing for the Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia. Group K will test that experience in an unusual way: Senegal and Cameroon are among the strongest youth-producing nations in Africa, while Grenada is a Caribbean island nation of fewer than 130,000 people.
A medal is not really the point here. Fourteen boys born in 2011 and 2012 will play competitive matches against Cameroon and Senegal before most of them turn 16, at a FIFA tournament being held for the first time.