Five things India needs to do to play in the FIFA World Cup

Improve infrastructure to host the World Cup

India still doesn’t have a single world class football stadium

Many people believe that India’s best chance of featuring in a FIFA World Cup is by hosting it as it will give them an automatic entry. But the reality is we don’t have the infrastructure to even host the Asian Cup. The stadiums are either owned by the state associations, state governments or local municipalities and most of them are multi-purpose venues. India not only needs new venues to host a senior World Cup but also improve the existing ones. IMG-Reliance are refurbishing some of the venues for the Indian Super League and the AIFF will also be taking steps to improve the infrastructure as India will be hosting the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2017 and the FIFA Club World Cups in 2017 and 2018. So that provides hope but the progress has to be rapid. The infrastructure doesn’t only include stadiums as Indian football also lack quality training grounds. As a result the India youth teams or national team go abroad to train for international tournaments. The infrastructure won’t improve overnight but there is plenty of work to be done if India ever wants to host the sport’s biggest competition one day.