Indian Football : A cry for help

We often wonder why our country, which ranks second in the world when it comes to population, has the beautiful Taj Mahal to flaunt to foreigners and has one of the best cricket teams, is unable to provide a good football team. Is it because we’re financially and economically backward? Or is it because we don’t have strong players? Or is it the cricket craze that has over-shadowed football and other sports?

Every Indian would know David Beckham or Wayne Rooney inside out. Football happens to be one of the most popular sports in out country, after cricket and hockey. All the school kids and the college chaps are die-hard football fanatics today. We’ve been the Asian champions twice. But the standard of Indian football is extremely poor; probably because India has given more importance to cricket leading to the negligence of football. Luckily for us, in 2006, an agreement between India and Brazil was signed to give adequate training to the Indian players and coaches.

Kolkata, is known as the home of Indian football, since it hosts some fiesty matches between the clubs East Bengal Club and Mohun Bagan AC. Goa has a club named Dempo SC, which is, apparently, the most successful club in the history of I-league.

The beginning

When it all began, there were the following clubs: Dalhousie Club, Traders Club and Naval Volunteers. The army men formed teams to play the game. In 1889, Mohun Bagan Athletic Club came into existence and in 1911, they gained an insane amount of fame when they became the first Indian team to bag the IFA Shield, which was previously won by British teams only. It also defeated the Eastern Yorkshire Regiment with a score of 2-1.

The Indian Football Association (IFA) was established in Kolkata in 1893 and had absolutely no Indians on board until the 1930s.

Our incredible achievements

India qualified for the Olympics in the 1970s where we were quite successful and also won gold medals at the 1951 and 1962 Asian Games. We also came 4th at the 1956 Olympics, Melbourne.

Surprisingly, India qualified for the 1950 World Cup, since the Philippines, Burma and Indonesia withdrew from the game. Unfortunately they wasted this opportunity and decided not to participate in the World Cup. Rumour has it that they were not allowed to play barefoot and hence refused to play. However, it could be just a myth and the actual reason was lack of practice, time issues, team selection issues and according to the Indian Football Team captain Sailen Manna, “We had no idea about the World Cup then. Had we been better informed, we would have taken the initiative ourselves. For us, the Olympics was everything. There was nothing bigger.”

Recently in Aug 2007, India became the proud winner of the Nehru Cup and for the first time ever, the team nailed Syria 1-0. Exactly after a year, the glorious Indians defeated Tajikistan 4-1 and won the AFC Challenge Cup and amazingly, we qualified for the 2011 AFC Asian Cup in Qatar. In 2009 August, India again won the Nehru Cup beating Syria in penalty with a score of 6-5.

The Asian Games 2010 : a legendary journey

Let me outline the events that took place during Asian Games 2010, New Delhi. The Indian football U23 team played against Qatar, Kuwait, Singapore and Japan. Since the football players of India have always disappointed us, coach Sukhwinder Singh decided to cut down the number of friendly matches from a series of matches to just one, against Vietnam, held in China. Apparently, the coach did not want to exhaust his players or deal with injuries or other mishaps two weeks before the actual Asian Games started.

The team kick started its journey with a game against Kuwait, the West Asian champions. The Kuwaitis piled pressure upon India very early in the game after Al Rashidi found the back of the net in the 6th minute of the game. Kuwait tried to increase their lead throughout the first half, but the score remained 1-0 at half time. Kuwait’s lead was doubled in the 58th minute; this time it was Khaled with the goal. Sukhwinder Singh tried to turn things around with his substitutes, but Indian boys were unable to find a single goal. How disgraceful!

Then the defending champions Qatar was made to play against India. Initially, during the first half of the match, the Indians totally nailed it. The Indian colts conceded two goals in the last ten minutes and the only silver lining to the dark clouds was a solitary goal by India. Ultimately the Qataris took us down, by a 1-2 margin, leaving us with no hopes of survival to reach the knock-out round. Yet again, our players disappointed us.

Surprisingly, somehow the team managed to scrape through to the knock-out stages of the Asian Games by defeating Singapore fair and square with a score of 4-1 and truly, it was a major achievement for India. Now they were all set to bring the mighty Japanese down.

Alas, the Japanese steamrolled past the Indian U23 side. Apart from Jewel Sheikh, Jibon Singh and Ravanan, the other strikers were not fit physically fit and had no energy. The original goal-keeper of the team Kuttimani was unavailable due to personal reasons and had to be replaced by Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. Due to lack of synchronization with the rest of the team and a major communication gap, Sandhu was unable to fight against Japan and with a wink of an eye, Japan set the field on fire with five goals. It was shameful, indeed!

The cherry and the icing of Indian Football

India is not devoid of bright talents in the sport. With some more effort and better training, the team can begin to do well. Though our national team might be languishing at the bottom of the world rankings, there are a few Indians with commendable performances at international level to their name.

Neville de Souza was India's brightest talent in the '50s

For starters, Neville de souza, who started his football career at the Goan Sports Club was one of the best players on India in the early 50s. In 1954, he got his first international taste at the Asian quadrangular in Rangoon. He has great achievements to his name like the 1956 victory over the Aussies with a score of 4-2 at Olympics, Melbourne. His brother Dereyk se souza proudly brags that his brother was equally good at hockey, but chose to concentrate on his first love, i.e. football.

Baichung Bhutia, the face of Indian football, came into the limelight in the 1992 Subroto Cup school tournament. When he was only 16, he joined the Calcutta city giants East Bengal Club, in 1993. In 1995, he moved to JCT Mills, Phagwara and helped the team win the National Football League.

Baichung Bhutia: The name on the mind of every Indian football fan

I M Vijayan, went from selling bottles of soda on the streets of Thrissur to becoming an excellent footballer, making his national debut for Kerala Police at the Quilon Nationals in 1987 followed by his international debut in 1989 at the Nehru Cup, the pre-Olympics, the pre-World Cup, SAAF Cup and SAAF Games.

Peter Thangaraj, Jarnail Singh Dhillon, P.K. Banerjee, Sailendra Nath Manna are some of the other big names in Indian football. We hope to see some more being added to this list as the sport continues to grow in the country.

The road ahead

Though the nation is cricket crazy, football has been growing in popularity by leaps and bounds, with more and more youngsters taking to the game, albeit with a lot of inspiration from European leagues. Yet India has light years to travel before it can challenge convincingly in the international level. With appropriate training facilities and rigorous coaching sessions, we can improve the state of the game in the country. Football in India, is literally like a coma patient on a ventilator. There have been minor improvements in the past few decades, but we’ve still got a long way to go! With the economy rapidly improving, the Indian government should provide adequate facilities for budding footballers. Most importantly, we should encourage more of our youth to give the ‘beautiful game’ its due importance and help the nation carve a place on the international scene.