I am not confident about India hosting the U-17 World Cup – Bhaichung Bhutia

Indian football icon Bhaichung Bhutia doesn’t have confidence in India’s under-17 World Cup bid. Last week AIFF officially submitted their bid to host the 2017 U-17 FIFA World Cup with a final decision expected to be taken at the FIFA executive committee meeting on December 3.

India faces competition from Uzbekistan, Ireland and South Africa and Bhaichung explained why he doesn’t feel India will win the hosting rights.

“To be honest the way the whole thing has been done so far, I am not confident about us hosting the U-17 World Cup. We are a big country and elections are not far away so there are a lot of issues and I don’t feel the government has supported the bid the way it could have. It’s great we have bid and it will be huge if we host it but I doubt whether we will get the chance eventually,” Bhaichung told the media on the sidelines of his visit to the Indian national team’s practice at Siliguri’s Kanchenjunga Stadium on Monday evening.

Ahead of India’s international friendly against Nepal on Tuesday, Bhaichung talked about why the gap between the sides is much smaller now compared to the time when he was still playing for the national team.

“There is hardly any difference between the teams of South Asia now. India used to be the superpower but other nations like Afghanistan, Maldives and Nepal have all improved. They are all smaller countries and can only get better because football is the number one sport there so they get full support from their government. In India, cricket is the only big sport and gets the backing from government but football and many other sports doesn’t. Hence it becomes very difficult,” the three-time AIFF Player of the Year opined.

Being the chairman of the AIFF technical committee, Bhaichung recently recommended the need of reducing the number of foreigners in the I-League and in this media interaction, he spoke at length about the issue.

“I am totally against the rule of allowing four foreigners in the starting eleven. There should be three with one on the bench and gradually maybe two on the field and one among the substitutes. I feel the number of teams should be increased from 13 to 16 but the quota of foreigners should be decreased for sure,” the former India captain stated.

But Bhaichung rejected the claim that Indian strikers are not coming up due to the increase in the number of foreigners.

“I don’t feel the foreigner rule is solely responsible for the lack of forwards. What we need is better youth development programs for players to learn from a tender age. Until now even most of the players who are playing in the national team haven’t received proper training at youth level but hopefully that will change with the regional academies,” the United Sikkim co-owner concluded.