India follows China with football program
Print Edition
AN ambitious project to awaken a sleeping giant of Asian soccer looks like confirming Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s famous remark that India pricks up its ears only when comparisons with China are made.
With China embarked on a multi-billion dollar mission to become a soccer superpower by 2050, India looks set to follow suit with its own plan to raise its status in the game to match its burgeoning economic power.
Come October, India, most famously described as soccer’s sleeping giant by former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, will launch a program to engage more than 11 million children in soccer-related activities.
All India Football Federation (AIFF) officials will not share details of the FIFA-backed program yet, but according to a government statement, “Mission 11 Million” will be launched in about 30 cities across the country.
As in China, where the soccer revolution was inspired by President Xi Jinping, the desire to improve India’s standing in the world game goes to the very top.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March lamented India’s decline from one of Asia’s top soccer nations in the 1960s to its current position at 163rd in the FIFA rankings, sandwiched between the Comoros and Tajikistan.
“Unfortunately, over the decades we have slipped to the lowest rungs,” Modi said in his weekly radio talk.
With India hosting the under-17 World Cup next year, states have been asked to promote football in a pattern similar to the trend across the border in China.
The world’s most populous nation plans to engage 30 million school children by 2020 as the first step toward achieving Xi’s “three wishes” for China — to qualify for a second World Cup finals, to host a World Cup and to eventually win one.
And while the AIFF are looking to engage as many of the country’s 1.3 billion people as possible, they have also cast their net wider with a global scouting program to identify talent in the Indian diaspora.
“The idea is to increase the talent pool,” former India captain and head of the scouting programme Abhishek Yadav said.
“We can’t guarantee that we can unearth 20 players overnight. It’s an attempt, which we believe might work. There’s no harm in trying.”
The program encourages anyone under 16 with an Indian passport to post, on a soon-to-launch portal, a two-minute video from a competitive match.
“We wanted to give the message that if you’re talented, location should not be a problem. All you need is a passport and potential,” said the former forward, who played 67 matches for India between 2002-2011.
Yadav and his team are now focusing on the Gulf States, where a large number of expatriates still hold Indian passports.
“Maybe we can then expand it to US and Australia, where we have many Indian students as well as parents who recently migrated there. We will also look at South Africa and Germany.”
While this has added to the buzz in the country around the hosting of the under-17 World Cup, not everyone believes India is standing on the cusp of a soccer resurgence.
“The fundamental difference between the neighbors is that China woke up long ago and played in World Cup finals before veering slightly off-track,” soccer writer Jaydeep Basu said.
“With state support, they are now trying to get back on track. In contrast, India, I’m afraid, is still in deep slumber,” added Basu, who has written an anecdotal history of Indian soccer.
“’Mission 11 Million’ has a nice ring to it but with only 3,000-odd certified coaches around, who’ll teach these kids to play soccer?”
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