In need of a blueprint

When the Indian football team was held to a goalless draw by Afghanistan in the opening leg of their second round of 2026 World Cup Qualifier in Saudi Arabia last month, many die-hard fans couldn’t believe it. They were then left dumbstruck after the Indians managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, going down 1-2 to the war-torn nation in the return leg at Guwahati four days later. Although India itself is a fringe player at the global level, ranked an abysmally low 121 now, the defeat against Afghanistan, placed even lower at 151, stung hard.

The primary reason why many felt disappointed with the performance of the Blue Tigers over the two legs was because the hope that was ignited in 2023 when they won three tournaments — the Intercontinental Cup, the Tri-Nations tournament and the SAFF Championship -- went up in smoke. They even drew 2-2 against a superior Iraq in an international friendly and managed to beat Kuwait in away game of the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers — both rarities.

The team, under coach Igor Stimac, was playing the kind of football many wished to see, attacking against lower-ranked teams and defensively solid against superior opponents. So when 2023, possibly one of Indian football team’s finest years in the last 4-5 decades, gave way to 2024, hopes and ambitions were naturally high. After all, sports is all about progression. But it has all come crashing down over the last three months with even the governing body — the All India Football Federation — in a state of deep mess with its own former legal head Nilanjan Bhattacharjee accusing president Kalyan Chaubey of corruption.

While fans and even some former players are livid with the Indian team’s inability to beat Afghanistan and are calling for the head of Stimac, blaming the combustible Croat solely for the senior team’s failures would be running away from reality. Yes, Stimac and the team must be held responsible for the slip-up but then the AIFF as well as various state and district associations too should cop a lot of flak for lacking leadership and vision to take the game forward. Not just the current powers that be but the ones who held offices previously for decades without doing much for the growth of the sport.

Organisational chaos and infighting right from the top to bottom, lack of programmes and tournaments at the youth and age group level which is essential for any sport to grow and thrive, no strong second or third tier league structures that have resulted in several talents fading out, the inability of the premier national league (ISL now) to churn out future hopes, failure of the administrators to build a sustainable financial model….the reasons are aplenty as to why the Indian football has failed to rise from the bottom of the pyramid for decades.

“It was bound to happen at some stage because India still doesn’t have a proper footballing ecosystem,” fumed Ranjit Bajaj, head of Minerva Academy FC which is notable for its work at the grassroots level, in a chat with DHoS. “Forget European countries, we don’t even have anything close to what some of the Asian countries have. In a bid to show they are doing something AIFF focussed heavily on the senior team and completely forgot about the junior and age-group sides, which should always be top priority.

“Look at what Japan did for example. They realised for them to be a power in football, they need to invest in juniors as much as the seniors. Their 100-year blueprint has been in the news many times. If the AIFF was serious about developing football, they should have taken a cue from that blueprint but then that it requires effort and hardly anyone is willing to put that. Many just want the comforts of the chair and feel of power.”

Bajaj’s concerns were echoed by Pradhyum Reddy, CEO of Dempo Sports FC. “We have plenty of kids in our academy. All they do is train, train and train. There are barely any good competitive tournaments in age groups from 10-20 years. So there’s hardly any match practice for them. This is not the case in Japan or Korea or even Australia where kids get to play literally every weekend. You can teach them all the skills but for them to execute it and see how they deliver under pressure, they need to play competitive games.

“Unless we get serious about strengthening our grassroots structure, India is just going to be ranked above 100. The funding and focus at the age-group level is almost non-existent. It’s clubs who are interested in football doing the heavy lifting. Clubs can take care of coaching, education etc but it’s the responsibility of the district and state associations to conduct tournaments consistently for us to keep the kids interested in football. A whole generation of footballers have been lost because of lack of tournaments over the last 4-5 years.”

Since Covid broke out first globally in December 2019, the AIFF has turned a blind eye to its youth programmes, only resuming activities last year after much criticism but there is very little way of knowing what exactly they are doing. On the AIFF website, clicking on Golden Baby Leagues under Development Activities comes up with an error message “Whoops, looks like something went wrong.” This has been the case for a while now and barely any corrective steps have been taken.

Very often in India several associations like to take potshot at the BCCI, almost blaming one of the finest functioning sports bodies in the world for hogging all the limelight and sponsors, leaving them with crumbs. But what they don’t want to learn is how efficiently BCCI organises tournaments across all age groups with matches amounting to around 3000. Then there are several state associations which conduct age-group tournaments, ensuring a conveyor belt of talent. In fact, associations like badminton, shooting and athletics have picked cues from BCCI and increased the number of tournaments at age group levels which reflect in their recent successes.   

Another issue plaguing Indian football is ISL’s inability to churn out fresh talents like IPL which consistently throws up hidden gems. Shockingly, the Indian team is still relying heavily on an ageing veteran, the 39-year-old Sunil Chhetri, to lead their strike force with no successor in sight.   

“It’s not the job of ISL clubs to generate talent. They can only spot the talent and provide a platform. In IPL, talents are spotted in Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Vijay Hazare Trophy or other events. Franchises only hire scouts to spot them. For ISL clubs to do the same, AIFF needs to first organise tournaments in a structured way,” felt Reddy.

Former player Raman Vijayan berated the lack of a strong league structure at the senior level. “In most countries, national leagues have at least 3 tiers or more. Yes, we have I-League which is the second tier but we all know the quality of it. Ever since AIFF anointed ISL as the premier league, it’s not putting much effort to ensure the sustained quality in I-League. It’s even worse with I-League Second Division. So when the feeder leagues get second class treatment, it’s obvious talents will get washed away.”

It’s a sad state of affairs that despite football being such a popular sport in the country, it has remained stuck in time warp because of several issues. India has a potential to become a real force at least at the Asian level, but to make that possible, the national federation, in union with the state associations, has to come up with a visionary plan like some of our Asian counterparts.