Just as the end credits are about to roll in the Ajay Devgn starrer Maidaan, one line encapsulates the past and present of Indian football while questioning its near future — “India has not qualified for the Olympics since 1960”. After Independence, the Indian men’s national team competed in four successive Olympics 1948–1960), peaking in Melbourne in 1956 when they finished fourth. The team had also qualified for the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil when their competitors withdrew from qualifying but did not take part due to reasons ranging from travel costs, playing barefoot and the Federation prioritising the Olympics.
While the FIFA World Cup has since superseded the Olympics as world football’s main event, the Blue Tigers have been nowhere near qualifying for the quadrennial spectacle. But they have now arrived at a crossroads. On June 6, India hosts Kuwait in their penultimate Group A game of the second round of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Asian qualifiers and if they win, they will be entering uncharted waters — the third round of the qualifiers.
For context, the FIFA World Cup has been expanding over the years — going from 16 teams (1954 to 1978) to 24 (1982 to 1994) to its current format of 32 (since 1998). However, the governing body of world football announced unanimously in 2017 to expand the competition to 48 teams, starting from the 2026 FIFA World Cup to be held across North America. This means the number of direct slots for Asian countries to compete in the main event has doubled from four to eight.
India has been absent from the world football stage for the last six decades. From having been a powerhouse of Asian football, we have been overtaken by those we defeated to get that acclaim — Japan, Korea, Iran. These countries are not just qualifying regularly for FIFA World Cups but excelling on the global stage. In recent times, Japan has defeated Germany, Korea has reached the World Cup semifinals and Iran has drawn with Portugal. If India wins this crucial fixture against Kuwait at the Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata, we will regain our place among these big guns — for the time being.
The downfall of the Indian men’s national team can be put down to an amalgamation of shortcomings in governance, a non-existent grassroots structure, a small player pool, quality of coaching, bad infrastructure, and the concentration of football culture in certain pockets of the country. The Indian Super League (ISL) promised us a new dawn upon its establishment in 2014 but a decade on, it has lost its title sponsor, failed to become sustainable and created a hyper-inflated player market dictated by intermediaries which has directly led to the creation of a comfort zone for players who have no incentive to test themselves in a tougher league with a lower pay package.
This top-down approach has led to a trickle-down effect of a results-based business where head coaches have to think about winning matches before developing players. In the ISL and I-League, a maximum of four foreign players can be included in the starting eleven and in almost all cases, these four take up the key central positions — central defence, central midfield and centre forward. This means there are barely any Indian players playing regularly in these key positions and when they are asked to do so for the national team, they are unable to perform to the required level.
A simple case in point is that of who will replace the outgoing captain and all-time top goalscorer Sunil Chhetri. The 39-year-old recently announced that he will retire after the game against Kuwait and is the only Indian forward playing centrally in the attacking areas for any ISL team. His understudies — Rahim Ali, Vikram Partap Singh, Ishan Pandita, Manvir Singh — are either played out of position to accommodate foreign strikers or not played at all. If they are suddenly asked to lead the line for their country, it would be unfair to expect them to be clinical in front of goal considering they do not find themselves in that part of the pitch on a regular basis.
India’s last two campaigns at the AFC Asian Cup have produced mixed results. In 2019, under the stewardship of Stephen Constantine, the Blue Tigers stunned Thailand 4-1 in the opening game before bowing out with a whimper in defeats to UAE and Bahrain. With Igor Stimac at the helm four years later, India exited the tournament as the worst team out of all 24 with no wins and no goals scored. The pragmatic Constantine is known to get the best out of the resources at his disposal and he introduced a counter-attacking style that suited the players at the time without gaining too many plaudits among the supporters. Stimac tried to be bolder by instructing his players to press high and play a possession-based passing game. The Croatian’s tactics worked against neighbouring lower-ranked teams like Nepal, Bangladesh, and Maldives. Still, technically superior teams like Qatar, Uzbekistan and even Malaysia, found it easy to slice the Blue Tigers open.
As the debate of style vs results continues to rage, the recent FIFA World Cup qualifier performances and results against Afghanistan in March earlier this year have brought the spotlight back onto Stimac. What should have been two wins and six points ended in a draw away and a defeat at home with just one point gained. The coach was accused of being tactically outwitted and the players of not being worthy of the national team jersey. They all have a chance to make amends on June 6 and usher in a new era and if they succeed, there will be at least 10 matches to play against Asia’s best. Everyone will have to raise their game — including the All India Football Federation (AIFF) — on and off the field. The prospect of hosting high-profile teams should bring in the required upgrades with respect to infrastructure and planning. The fans will get to see world-class players in action and the players will get a chance to compete against them.
Failure on June 6 would harm Indian football. The AIFF has already got a lot of bad press. In times of social media, the discontentment of fans is already clear. Another exit from the FIFA World Cup qualifiers would lead to stagnation of Indian football and most importantly – an extinguishing of hope.
The writer was Media Co-ordinator at the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and the Media Officer at I-League club Sreenidhi Deccan FC
