India is a “sleeping giant” of football, according to former FIFA President Sepp Blatter, but the sport is struggling under new problems and has to deal with issues at the grassroots.
The Indian Super League (ISL), India’s main rival, is in danger of collapsing due to a dispute between the federation and its commercial partner because the men’s national team is without a coach.
The celebrated veteran striker Sunil Chhetri wrote on X about the ISL’s future, saying that “everyone in the Indian football ecosystem is worried, hurt, and scared about the uncertainty we are facing.”
When he retired from his 40-year career in March, the former national skipper unwittingly summed up one of the issues facing Indian football.
The striker is only second in the history international scoring charts behind Cristiano Ronaldo (138), Lionel Messi (112), and Ali Daei (108).
He has left his best years behind, but he has since resurrected on the national side with no younger ones.
India’s men have only won one of their last 16 matches and are 133rd in the FIFA rankings, which is their lowest position in nearly a decade.
After only one year and one win from eight games, Spaniard Manolo Marquez resigned as head coach this month and has never won a World Cup.
His final act was to prevent Hong Kong, which had a population of 7.500 million and 1.44 billion people, from qualifying for the Asian Cup.
The ISL is typically played between September and April.
However, the rights agreement between the ISL’s parent company, Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL), expires on December 8 and has not yet been renewed.
More than 5, 000 players, coaches, staff, and others have been affected by the uncertainty, which the league is currently experiencing in advance of the new campaign.
Subrata Paul, the director of India’s national football team and former captain, is confident that the sport, which is so obsessed with cricket, will flourish.
According to Paul, who is regarded as one of India’s best-ever goalkeepers, “Indian football, like any growing ecosystem, will face its own challenges and transitions.”
This is a time to reflect, pause, and refocus, I believe. We all who enjoy the game can struggle with the recent results and the uncertainty surrounding the ISL, but there is also a bright side to it.
By investing in youth development, infrastructure, and top-notch coaching, we have an opportunity to strengthen our foundation.
The franchise-based ISL was founded in 2014 as a league that aimed to introduce the game in a new way, including Alessandro Del Piero, an Italian international star.
The ISL has seen declining TV ratings and sponsor interest as a result rather than a boom.
As the most populous nation in the world, India has long been a top player in the game.
Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who is now FIFA’s director of global football development, made a 2023 visit to inaugurate an academy.
Wenger, who has supported India’s football development, especially at the grassroots level, met AIFF President Kalyan Chaubey, who is also a politician with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Wenger, according to Chaubey, thinks it is too late to begin playing football at 13 years old, as is customary in India. He advised players to start with eight.
There has been a small amount of success in the distant past despite India never having won the World Cup and having previously failed to do so in North America next year.
Between 1948 and 1960, India qualified for the Olympics four times. India finished fourth at the 1956 Melbourne Games after losing to Bulgaria in the bronze-medal match.
India has endured a deep sleep since Blatter’s “sleeping giant” characterization in 2007.
In India, football is a distant second behind cricket and hockey in popularity, with the southern state of Kerala and the eastern city of Kolkata as its main hotspots.
There has long been mismanagement by Indian football chiefs, according to veteran sport journalist Jaydeep Basu, adding to the difficulties of the game in India.
The team’s decline from its position of 99 in September 2023, Basu told AFP, “basically indicates poor management.
According to Basu, who recently co-authored the book Who Stole My Football, there is a caucus working in the AIFF of two or three people who are producing the show for their own gain.
Source: Aljazeera
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