As a sporting nation, India still has miles of catching up to do before we can be considered one. Sure we do have flashes of individual brilliance. The much maligned yet supremely competent duo of Leander - Mahesh in Tennis, the Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra, and of course Indian sports recent poster girl, badminton world number three Saina Nehwal. But those are few and far between. To be fair, India has, in recent years been improving steadily at international sports. Perhaps the incessant criticism of the Indian Olympic Committee for decades has finally started to pay dividends.
But to get back to soccer, no such luck here. Ranked 133 by FIFA, we have qualified for the 2011 Asian Cup, but a qualification birth at soccer’s showcase event; the World Cup, still seems as elusive as the abominable snowman. The critics have given up and so, it seems, have the fans. No one considers it a remotely realistic possibility. One failure at a cricket match brings out endless news time of debate but no one is ready to deliberate upon this very basic issue of how do we , at least in effect, try to qualify once for sports premier event. Why is it considered such a far fetched idea for a country that feverishly basks in the glory of its sporting achievements; the cricket world cup and the tennis doubles grand slam victories?
Is it the lack of finances and infrastructure, lack of international exposure or is it the commonly trumped up excuse of simply not having athletes with the physical stamina to match the global standards. The last one seems to somehow suggest this ridiculous notion that a country of over a billion simply can’t come up with a football squad of 23 players who can face the rigours of this physically demanding sport.
India has done well in the past, winning two gold medals in the 1951 and 1962 Asian Games respectively and reaching the semi finals on two other occasions. They also set a new record in 1956, with their semi final appearance at the Olympic football tournament being the best performance by an Asian team in an Olympic football tournament at that point. So, while our Asian cousins Japan and South Korea have come a long way to occasionally upset the giants of world football, India is being beaten by Lebanon (FIFA ranking 160) in the 2010 qualifiers.
With the arrival of Bob Houghtan as the coach, one can hope for this trend to change in the future. Though his spat with the AIFF resulted in him resigning over the issue, he has been asked to stay on till the Asian Cup in Doha next year. A no nonsense man himself, Houghton understands the importance of heightened exposure of the Indian football team at global events.
Surely the infrastructure and lack of international exposure are not problems that will be solved in the blink of an eye, yet for a sport crazy nation like India these are not issues that are impossible to solve. It is time for the media and the administrators as well as the fans themselves to go on an overdrive to promote Indian football like never before, at least till the day when the sight of an Indian tricolour flying high at a World Cup football match is no more baffling to the viewers.
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