The farcical nature of Indian football  

The 21st football world cup is about to begin. And, as always, India is nowhere in the picture. This is both a disappointment and an embarrassment to millions of football lovers like me. But the reasons have never been truthfully answered. We have hidden ourselves behind screens of misrepresentations and hypocrisy. High time that Indians know the truth about our football scenario. 

 Today India is ranked below 100 other soccer-playing nations of the world. Today even at the Asian level we are among the bottom-rankers. If nations like Panama, Iceland, Cameroon and Costa Rica among others can become world-cuppers, why can we not make it?

Ironically, soccer was introduced to India much earlier than it was established in Brazil by Britain. The sport was introduced in India by the Britons in the 1850s whereas they laid the foundation of football in Brazil much later in the 1880s. The game was played in India by the military men stationed here. The native Indians were quick to grasp the fundamentals and organized clubs to compete with the British teams based in India.

But so attuned were we to being within the ‘comfort zone’ of our country that our players, coaches and officials had little idea of how football was evolving around the world. The World Cup had begun in 1930. Soccer at the Olympics had started still earlier, in 1900. Initially at the Olympics it was an all-European affair, but from 1924 Olympic soccer began to attract nations from around the world. All over the globe the players had progressed from ‘bare-feet football’ to wearing boots with studs on.

In India we still continued to play in bare-feet with anklets on! Actually, even now, some people take great pride to say that those Indian players had real courage because they played in bare feet against the boot-studded Brits. Such misplaced bravado cost Indian soccer very dear in the long run.

In fact when India first took part in Olympic soccer in 1948, our boys actually played in bare-feet! It was not allowed by the existing rules. But at the time India had just gained independence and the Olympics were held at London, so the British authorities, in an act of over-magnanimity, allowed the Indian players to play without boots on. On a bone-dry ground, the Indians put up an outstanding display but finally went down 1-2 against France, after missing 2 penalties!

The next Olympic Games were held at Helsinki in 1952. Our much-vaunted ‘bare-feet players’ made a mess of the slushy conditions. They were thrashed by Yugoslavia, 1- 10. Yes, that’s right, 1-10. Only after that year realization dawned in India that one cannot play proper soccer without proper boots on.

In between the two Olympics, in 1950 India received an invitation from Brazil to take part in the World Cup. India failed to accept the invitation (those days there were no qualifying rounds) and since then India has never been a part of the World Cup. Recently an idea is being floated that India could not go to distant South America because of the high cost of travel. This is not true at all.

At the time, just after India’s independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, an ardent lover of sports, was very keen to see India participating in sports tourneys around the world. Money was made available for various sports meets including hockey, cricket and other sports. In fact, football too had received government patronage and private sponsorship to travel to London for the 1948 Olympics.

Money was certainly not the major issue. The outrageous demand of our football authorities was to be allowed to play in bare-feet! FIFA was adamant that they would not allow anybody to twist their rules: either you play with boots on or don’t play at all.

Even for the 1954 World Cup at Switzerland an invitation was extended to India. True to form, our football authorities returned the entry form after the expiry date and consequently India was not allowed to take part.

In the last five decades India took part in pre-World Cup tournaments and invariably was defeated by big margins even by Asian sides.  Indian football since the year 1970 has not been able to make a mark even at the low Asian level.

For the last five decades, India’s football stature has stagnated at the rock-bottom. But still we have not bothered to analyze our weaknesses. We have tried to take refuge under various lame excuses. We have blamed the lack of infrastructure, the lack of sponsorship money and the lack of opportunities. Are Nigeria, Senegal and Honduras superior to us in these respects?

Our problem is that we have remained dishonest to ourselves. We have continuously hoodwinked our football enthusiasts. Today, India is not even a force in Asian soccer. As it is, Asian soccer is no big deal in the world of football. For the world cup among the best 32 nations, three teams from Asia are considered for qualification just for the sake of universal participation. These Asian teams are grossly inferior to teams from Europe, South America and Africa which do not qualify for the world cup.

Even among these weak Asian countries, India has no standing. At present we have come down to bullying our next-door neighbours in the South Asian Federation (SAF) games. Quite a come-down it is. In1951 and again in 1962 we were the Asian champions. We used to beat Japan and South Korea (who are regular world-cuppers now). Even in 1970 we were the bronze medal winners in the Asian Games. After that what has Indian football got to show? Just nothing.

In the 1980s the Nehru Cup was introduced. Top-quality foreign teams came to play. But what did Indian gain? Now we are having the I-League and the ISL for quite a number of years. How far has Indian football progressed? 

The eternal truth is that Indian football has to develop from within. No amount of money or overseas talent transfusion will be of any help. African and South American countries, including the top football nations Brazil and Argentina, can offer very little to their young trainee-players by way of facilities and funds. Yet how do they manage to produce outstanding talents?  Even players from economically advanced nations dance to their samba tunes. Why does this happen?

Surprisingly no one in India seems to be bothered. The golden age of Indian soccer was between 1956 and 1962.Instead of eulogizing those truly great players, at the moment the trend is to heap praise on players who achieved nothing worthwhile during their heydays, post 1971. This kind of hypocrisy will not help soccer to thrive in India.

Memories of men like Neville D’Souza, Peter Thangaraj, Arun Ghosh (my football idol), Jarnail Singh, Tulsidas Balaram, Simon Sundaraj, Pradip Banerjee , Prosanto Sinha, Yousuf Khan and Chuni Goswami, among others, are fading away fast. This was the nucleus that helped India to exhibit fabulous soccer at Melbourne, Rome and Jakarta between 1956 and 1962.

Neville D’Souza had scored four goals, including a hat-trick against Australia (now a world-cup side) at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. True to Indian tradition, he was excluded from the 1960 Rome Olympic team! How many of us have heard of Neville D’Souza, I wonder.

The Indian soccer world is living in a cocoon of self-hypnosis. Unless we are honest to ourselves and to football, no improvement will ever take place. First we need to accept the fact that Indian football has been a total flop even at the low Asian level since that ‘bronze’ medal in the 1970 Asiad.

Yes, Indian football brigade can take heart that there are about 80 nations still behind India’s football rank. What needs to be analyzed is why are we behind Japan and Korea whom we used to defeat during our golden days between 1956 and 1962? Why are we behind teams from Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Honduras, Morocco, Columbia and others who  are economically far behind India and can give little by way of assistance to their own players?

Economically these countries are so backward that their players seek football-employment abroad. And because these players are exceptionally brilliant, they get very lucrative jobs as soccer-professionals. On the contrary our best players are so mediocre that they are turned back from wherever they go. This sad truth we must learn to face: we are just not good enough. No point hiding behind excuses, pretexts and verbiage. Our soccer heroes returned from the last Asian Games after being thrashed 5-0 and 2-0 in the two matches that they played.

Instead of finding faults with other sports and games, it is high time that we, the football fans of India, got the honest answers from the people concerned with Indian football. Indian football will not progress one step as long we stick to our hypocritical ways and means. Do we have the courage to accept the truth that apart from 1956 to 1962 we were never good enough?

The most important issues are: why are we not good enough? And, what is being done to rectify matters?