India went down to Turkmenistan 0-2 in a first-leg match in the first round Asian pre-Olympic football qualifiers, for the 2004 Athens Olympics, at Ashkhabad in Turkmenistan, on Saturday.
The defeat jolted India's chances of a place in the second round, where the winner of the tie plays Malaysia.
The Indian under-23 team now faces a tough task when it meets Turkmenistan in the return match in at Goa on April 19.
In a keenly-contested match, which remained goaless till the last quarter, Azad Mohadov put the hosts ahead in the 75th minute before a penalty-kick, converted by Karimov, in injury time made the scoreline 2-0.
The Indian team: Sangram Mukherjee, Arun Malhotra, Satish Bharti (captain), Vinu Jose, Dipankar Roy, Sukhwinder Singh (Harpreet Singh), Jatin Singh Bisht (Ishfaq Ahmed), Manitombi Singh, Tomba Singh, Asim Biswas, Alex Ambrose (Sheikh Sanjeeb).
PTI
