The world
was left in shock when Iceland, a country with population of 3.57 lakh people
drew against Messi led Argentina in 2018 FIFA world cup. They had earlier
defeated England in 2016 Euros. So a collective question arose among Indians
that why can’t a country with 136 crore people produce a quality football squad?
Let’s take a
look at some areas which are important for any sports to grow.
·
India’s Former Captain Baichung Bhutia has repeatedly
said that the first step to achieve heights in football for India is to grow
the culture of football which I believe is a work in progress since there is a
huge growth of interest among youth. Indians love watching football but
unfortunately not Indian football and the other factor is large portion of these football fans are
wealthy urban youths .Though their interest has resulted in live airing of
English premier leagues and many more, but India’s core sports players come
from rather lower middle or middle class which still prefers cricket or Individual
games. Taking a look at India’s demographics football is still not popular in
the Hindi heartland and the majority of players come from the north east and
southern parts of India.
Brazil, Peru, Chile or African nations have similar or worst condition then India. But they still produce global stars and compete at World Cup. It is more about creating a culture and tapping talents at young age rather than infrastructure. I believe schools can play a major role in this scenario but they are least interested about sports which is an unfortunate reality.
· India’s Under performance in team sports – Try to remember India’s best sports stars, you will find that 90% of those are players competing in individual sports. Some of you may argue that India had a great hockey team, but hockey 20th Century was dependent on magical dribblers and we were supreme in that period but our dominance faded when hockey became passing-oriented.
Talking about cricket it
is a partial team sports meaning every ball is independent event played between
the batsman and the bowler( You can add fielder and non striker etc)
Sports like football or
volleyball are different then cricket. Full teams from both sides are always
involved making individual brilliance less important and more team oriented.
The reason for India’s Under performance can be India’s lack of discipline and improper system and our
authorities need to analyse this issues to take giant step forward as sporting
giants.
Rugved Makarand Joshi
The Sports league plays huge role for a particular sport as it brings in attention of crowd and the Market but I will talk about our football league in a separate blog.
