In 2016, a young goalkeeper wrote Indian football history in Kristiansand. Gurpreet Singh Sandhu kept a clean sheet when Stabæk beat Start 5–0 in the Eliteserien. In front of 7,273 spectators at Sør Arena, he became the first Indian to play in a top division in Europe. Not that year. Not even that decade. The first ever. The debut was big news in India, the world’s most populous country with more than 1.4 billion inhabitants. A number of Indian newspapers wrote about the match. In Mumbai, Sandhu was trending on Twitter. news asked Sandhu about the difference between Norwegian and Indian football. – The level is much higher here, said Sandhu. HISTORICAL: Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. Today he plays for Indian Bengaluru FC in India. Photo: Tor Erik Schrøder / NTB And with that he touched one of football’s greatest mysteries. In November, the legendary coach Arsène Wenger was in India to open an academy under the auspices of FIFA, where he now works, and he said something that many have wondered about. – It should not be possible for a country like India, with 1.4 billion inhabitants, not to be on the football map, said Wenger. India has never played in the World Cup, either for women or men. They have never become Asian champions. The men have only participated in the Asian Championship four times, and they have one win there since 1964. The women have not played in the championship for 20 years. A HIDDEN GOLD MINE: This is how Arsene Wenger describes football in India. Here with India’s football president Kalyan Chaubey. Photo: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / AFP In the FIFA rankings, India’s men’s team is here: Position | Country | Population 100 – Kazakhstan – 20 million 101 – Kosovo – 1.9 million 102 – India – 1.4 billion 103 – Guinea-Bissau – 2.2 million 104 – New Zealand – 5.2 million Wenger added that Indian football was a “gold mine” that was hidden. But India has been looking for a long time. They have invited Pelé and Diego Maradona to give them inspiration. They have brought in players from European football, among them two Norwegians, John Arne Riise and Kristian Opseth. The gold lies untouched. Now India’s men will participate again in the Asian Championship, and will face Australia on Saturday this weekend. But the chances of success are slim: in the last four matches, India have lost to Malaysia, Lebanon and Qatar. Why is India not figuring out this sport? IN INDIA: John Arne Riise played in India for a while. Photo: ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP Let’s sweep away a couple of possible reasons first. “In football, Asia has always been behind Europe” True, but India’s men are being crushed by the continent’s underdogs, and countries such as Japan and South Korea have been fixtures in the World Cup since the 90s. “It’s a big and chaotic country” So is Brazil, and China has reached the World Cup. So news has asked Somnath Sengupta, a journalist who runs an account on Twitter about Indian football history. He cites a mystery that has been debated for more than 70 years and which he says could turn Indian football – and soccer – on its head. – It was a great opportunity that was wasted, says Sengupta. India has qualified for a World Cup. But then they backed off. Played barefoot Everything was in place for India’s big breakthrough. In 1950 they reached the World Cup without kicking a ball. All the rivals in the qualifiers – Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia – withdrew. In the 1948 London Olympics, India had narrowly lost 2–1 against France itself. In 1947, India became independent from Great Britain. Now they were going to the WC in Brazil to show the world what they could do. And then the Football Association of India said no. Officially, the reason was that they had too little time to prepare, but no historians buy that explanation. There are three theories as to what the cause was. India was not allowed to play barefoot India would not pay for the trip India did not think the World Cup was important enough The first is a popular myth. It is true that India played barefoot in London, but FIFA had no requirement for shoes. Flights from Asia to South America were expensive. Several teams said no thanks to the World Cup that year, among them Turkey, France and Portugal. But Brazil wanted a country from Asia, and treated India’s ticket. So the most likely reason, says Sengupta, is that India did not prioritize the World Cup. PAINTING: In connection with the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, several portraits of iconic footballers were painted on the streets of Mumbai. Photo: Rajanish Kakade / AP The World Cup had only taken place three times before 1950. England, the game’s inventors, had not yet bothered to join. Sailen Manna, India’s captain that year, has told Sports Illustrated magazine that India’s players actually did not know about the World Cup. India would rather play the Olympics, which the whole world had known for more than 50 years. – The Olympics meant everything to us. There was nothing bigger, Manna told Sports Illustrated, according to the LA Times newspaper. But the Olympics were only for amateurs. The World Cup was full of professionals and, according to Sengupta, the Football Association of India was afraid that playing in the World Cup would jeopardize its amateur status. So India’s federation kept the team at home. India have never reached the World Cup again. – Had they taken that journey, Indian football would have been on a different level, Manna said. Sengupta agrees. – It had introduced Indian football to the rest of the world, he says. In the next few years, Indian football ended up in the wasteland. 70-minute matches India have never recovered from that incident. In the 1952 Olympics, they lost 10–1 to Yugoslavia in Helsinki, the last time they played barefoot. Two years later, FIFA refused to include them in the World Cup qualifiers. It started a long period where India did not even want to field. India would not try to reach the World Cup again until the 80s. Several believe that they could qualify. India came fourth in the Olympics (1956), second in the Asian Championships (1964) and won the Asian Games (1962). Sengupta says India was then isolated from the rest of international football. And the domestic football was a blissful mess. There was no national league, only a chaos of local championships. Historian David Goldblatt has written that the Indian Football Association was known for “legendary inefficiency”. The association was ridiculed, he writes, for being “conservative, amateurish, inefficient and slow”. The association decided that matches should last 70 minutes. When the national team met their rivals in “normal” matches, they were exhausted. – Just playing 90 minutes would have been great progress, says Sengupta. By the start of the 80s, the Asian rivals were well ahead. Japan and South Korea had made football professional, while India were still amateurs. Then, in 1983, something happened that would change sports in the country forever. India won the Cricket World Cup. God – That’s where the problems begin, says Manasi Pathak. She is an Indian journalist who has covered football in her home country for a number of international media outlets. Pathak says cricket is to India what football is to Brazil. – Cricket is a religion here, she says. FOLK SPORT: Cricket is by far the most popular sport in India. Photo: SANJAY KANOJIA / AFP No one in India expected the title in 1983. Sengupta says that India is a large country with many different regions, languages and cultures. Only a national triumph can tie all the parts together and make a sport popular. It could have happened with football. It happened with cricket. – The title created an impression among the people that cricket was the sport where we could really do well, says Sengupta. India got new heroes. At the start of the 90s came Sachin Tendulkar, one of the best cricketers in history. – He is almost considered a god, says Sengupta. In 1996, India helped organize the Cricket World Cup. – After that, football didn’t have a chance to compete, says Sengupta. POPULAR FAVOR: Indian students hold up a large poster of cricket hero Sachin Tendulkar. Photo: AP Today, football lives in the shadow of cricket. The newspapers write about cricket, and in Indian homes families have pictures of cricket stars on the wall. – Cricket is more of a cultural issue than a sport. You don’t necessarily have to love sports to be able to talk about cricket in India, says Pathak. This affects young people. Pathak says that Indian families want their children to do well academically. If they are going to play a sport, it should be cricket, where Indians are among the highest paid in the world. India made a comeback in the World Cup qualifiers in 1985. They have stumbled every single time. Nor has the women’s team reached the best company since the Women’s World Cup began in 1991. In 2006, then FIFA president Sepp Blatter said that India was a “sleeping giant”. – We wonder when the giant will wake up, says Sengupta. PRESIDENT: Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter dons a traditional Indian headdress in connection with the Indian Football Association’s 70th anniversary. Photo: Manish Swarup / AP The Super League In 2013, the Indian association tried to revolutionize football in the country. They started the Indian Super League. India only got a national league in 1996, without it becoming particularly popular. Now the association created a tournament based on the popular league in cricket. Instead of sending invitations to the major teams, they created slots for eight new teams, or franchises, that could be purchased. No one could move down. This created a new buzz around Indian football. Investors, celebrities and sports stars poured money into the franchises. They brought in stars from European football, such as Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires and Fredrik Ljungberg. In the first season, the Superliga had an average attendance of around 25,000 per match. It was there to stay. LEGENDS: Alessandro Del Piero and Luis Garcia went to India to participate and create a buzz around football. Photo: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR / AFP The Super League has since replaced the old top league. John Arne Riise has played for Dehli Dynamos and Chennaiyin FC, while Kristian Opseth has played for Bengaluru FC. City Football Group, which owns Manchester City, acquired Mumbai City in 2019, a move that shows the interest of Western teams in Indian football. But the average attendance has now fallen to around 12,000 per match. Sengupta says neither team is making money. – For the owners, it is more like charity, he says. He wonders how long the owners will finance the teams if they don’t make a profit soon. Unfortunately for Indian football, the Super League has not lifted the national team. Pathak says the local players have learned little from the foreign stars. And although Indians watch a lot of European football, interest in the Indian league varies greatly. STAR: Brazilian Ronaldinho has also been in India to inspire. Here at an academy in Kolkata in 2023. Photo: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR / AFP This is a problem, says Sengupta. Football is only popular in parts of India, and in some states there are hardly any leagues at all. – India is big. If you don’t have fan bases spread across the country, you’ll never get broad support for the game, and neither will the national team, says Sengupta. He reiterates that the whole of India must be bound together by one common thing. – Unless the national team is successful, it is difficult to make the sport popular. – Everyone has lost their way So maybe an upturn in the Asian Championship is what Indian football needs. India last featured in 2011, when they lost all their matches. In the Asian Championship in the next few weeks, they need magic from their big star, the 39-year-old striker Sunil Chhetri. He is a legend in his home country, but abroad his greatest achievement is one game for the Kansas City Wizards in the USA, and a handful of games for Sporting’s B team in Portugal. – For seven years we have been asking who will take over for Chaitri. We still don’t have the answer, says Pathak. FAR DOWN: The Indian national football team is in 102nd place in the international Fifa rankings. Photo: KHALED DESOUKI / AFP One positive development is that India has organized tournaments, such as the U17 World Cup in 2017 and the Asian Women’s Championship in 2022. Unfortunately, the women’s national team was infected with covid just before the latter tournament and could not play. Worse news also came in 2022, when India were suspended by FIFA for 11 days. The Indian government had ousted the federation’s leadership and appointed its own committee, which FIFA considered political influence. – Everyone has blundered at every level, said the Indian sports journalist Mihir Vasavda to the website The Athletic. Missing a clear vision from the top, Pathak doesn’t think the giant will wake up anytime soon. – I am not very optimistic, she says. Sengupta agrees with Wenger that India has great potential. He believes that Indian footballers are now better trained than before, and that football has become more popular. But he believes more things need to happen. In the Super League, the clubs have to stay alive. At lower levels, teams need to get better at developing young players. He also mentions that many “young” players lie about their age, and claim that they are younger than they are. This creates problems for the youth teams. If these things are fixed, says Sengupta, India can reach the Asian Championship regularly, which he believes should be the first step. What about the World Cup? – There is an opportunity… says Sengupta. – But not before 20 years from now. In that case, the gold will lie untouched for a while longer.
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The Indian football enigma – Sport Langlesing
