Football is the most popular sport across the globe. There are fans who travel from one corner to another of the world just to watch a single match of football. It is very popular in Brazil, Argentina, Australia and in some of the European countries.
International Federationof Association Football organises world cup of Football after every 4 years which is known as FIFA World Cup. In 2022 FIFA world cup is held in Qatar. Surprisingly a country with 1/5 population of the world has never qualified for the FIFA World Cup. Yes, India has not even qualified for the FIFA World Cup where Sunil Chhetri is the second highest goal scorer in the world among the active players. There was a time when India uses to qualify regularly for the Olympics and even India had won was gold medal in 1951 and 1962 Asian games. India had also drawn a match with France by 1-1 in 1960. Then why a team like this has never qualified for FIFA world cup and presently ranked at 106. Football was neglected by the government. Football had a big number of audience but after India won cricket world cup in 1983 a huge no. of audience shifted towards cricket. Indian government and private companies also invested in cricket.
India still has a good amount of football audience but they are concentrated from West Bengal, North East States, Kerala, Goa etc. another problem is Indian football lovers are not Indian football audience. They’ll watch premier League, LaLiga, UEFA Champions League etc but they’ll not watch Indian Super League (ISL), I-league of India’s International matches. Majority of the Indian football lover will tell the starting XI of PSG, Liverpool, Real Madrid etc. but not starting XI of Indian football team.
The second big reason of downfall of Indian football is corruption. There are many cases which shows how corrupt India is in order to football. Some of the cases are Godwin Franco Cases, Karnataka A division case, J&K Santosh Trophy case, Goa Pro League fixing Scandal, and the most famous U-17 women WC case of COA and Praful Patel.
Now the focus should be on what’s next. Mr. Mukesh Ambani has invested in football by starting a league called Indian Super League(ISL) with Hero cycles. He wants to make India a football powerhouse because he knows the prestige which a county gets after being a big football nation team. ISL invites big international coaches and players because of which there is a huge improvement seen in the players as well as the infrastructure. Result of ISL can be witnessed by performance of Indian team. India has qualified back-to-back in AFC Asian Cup. Mr. Ambani wants India to qualify for 2026 FIFA World Cup where 48 teams will qualify instead of 32.
To see the Indian team in the 2026 world cup developing fan interest a major factor. Investments will automatically come if there will be a good number of audience and attendance.
–An article Jayesh Kumar Thakur
