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[caption id="attachment_5170" align="alignnone" width="580"] Nicolai Adam with the U-16 players. Image Source: File Pic[/caption] Internet Desk: The Indian squad participating in the AFC Asian Championship Under-16 will be without four key members of their current squad – Abhijit Sarkar, Tamal Naskar, Hendry Antonay and Joysana Singh. The reason being different cut-off dates with regards to choosing the squad for the AFC Under-16 tournament as well as the World Cup. AFC Under-16 championship stipulations state that any player born between January 1st 2000 and September 1st 2000 will not be eligible for the tournament provided they haven’t been registered a year before for the AFC Under-16 qualifiers. But the Under-17 World Cup rules state that players born between January 1st and September 1st, 2000 will be available for selection. “The problem is, AFC (Asian Football Confederation), for whatever reason - I still don't understand the reason, they tell me it is to prevent age cheating - a newly scouted player that was not in the final list for the qualifiers cannot play in the AFC Championship now if he is born before September 1st 2000. So new players, which we have actually found, can only play if they were born on September 1st 2000 or later. “For example, a big Indian talent who we have in Abhijit as a number 10 cannot play because he was not on that final list for the qualifiers. He was on the preliminary list. If somebody should ask why Abhijit was not on that list, he was injured at that time. Name one head coach who put an injured player on the final list for a qualifying round. No head coach does that. So that rule makes no sense. To be very honest with you, I did not know about that rule (earlier). If I had known about that rule, I would have put him on that list even after he was injured, but who does that. Normally, nobody does that. “Because of that rule, he (Abhijit) cannot now play in the AFC Championship. In other words, if you are in Abhijit's situation and injured at the wrong time, your football year is basically over. The next highlight for the youth players is may be in 2019. So AFC has to think about this rule. Does that make sense? Is that for the best development of a player?' It's not,” India Under-16 coach Nicolai Adam reacted.