What ails Indian Football

The headlines read that twiterratti celebrates Indian football teams FIFA ranking reaching a 21 year high of being in the top 100 among all FIFA nations. Something to cheer about? Yes, considering that at one point we were ranked somewhere below 130 and many times lower than countries which many of us wouldn't have even heard of.

What ails Indian football, why is that we are so lowly ranked in the world. We have some of the largest fan bases in the world. The English Premier League or the Bundesliga or the Copa America has probably more crazy fans in India than in their own home counties. I can see almost every pub or lounge bar on the weekend playing live matches of the EPL with crowds of youngsters throwing comments and strategies on what Paul Pogba should do next or why Vincent Kompany is the best Manchester City has had in a long while or why Jose Mourinho can never become the next Sir Alex Fergusson. The same exuberance is displayed once in four years when the FIFA world cup is held. All though India would have failed to qualify to the finals much before the elimination round the interest shown by Indian football fans in tracking the performances of other teams is simply amazing.

After all this one would certainly expect a country with such a vibrant football support base to be atleast highly ranked in Asia but is not the case. To add to it the Indian soccer league between teams named after regions and cities of India has bought a lot of interest to the game. But a point is what is that ails Indian football while we can claim glory in cricket even though not many countries play cricket as compared to football and we are quite successful when it comes to hockey why is our performance is below par in football. The answer could lie in the fact that how many of us actually play football, how many of us would encourage our children to take up this game on serious level. Professional football is a muscular sport requiring extreme levels of training and fitness coupled with a disciplined training regime, do we have enough staff to coach the new generation of players. Baring a few States like Kerala, Goa, West Bengal and North East India most of the other states hardly have any talent to showcase.

Probably the answer to the question 'What ails Indian Football?' is we just don't need a few players from handful of states to play the game, the game will grow when all of us get out of the house onto the field and start playing it in our own little way and not just watch it on television.