Football: India is stopping itself

Let me begin by saying that Bob (Houghton) did a great job with the national side. But I do not think too much has changed in terms of the I-League and the general set-up since I have left.

It is concerning that the national team players are more or less the same since I left. With that set of players, Bob has done a good job but I don’t think he has received enough help from the All India Football Federation (AIFF). By that, I mean having a wider pool of players to choose from. The AIFF should have stressed on the clubs to start their own academies and try to bring other states into the footballing fraternity. If you do not have an organised academy that develops young players, then where are you going to get the next generation of players?

One of the main reasons for this is that I do not think people at the AIFF are thinking much about the game. They are thinking what they can gain by holding a particular post. I will refer to my old friend (and former AIFF general secretary) Alberto Colaco, who used to work round-the-clock to develop Indian football. But the trouble was that many of the so-called football lovers in some of the states only want to occupy a certain position and are not willing to give back enough to the game. Unless the people in charge think about the game first rather than their politics, nothing will improve. The attitude that the state or the club comes before India is also a big obstacle.

So what needs to be done? Well, if I was the director of football in India, I would ensure that the following things are taken care off. 

The idea to have an under-19 side in the I-League had been suggested by myself, with Mr Colaco, in 2003. That, in the current set-up, is the only way to ensure that youngsters are guaranteed a game week in and week out. Although that move has finally taken place several years later (in the form of Indian Arrows), I am happy about it.

Having said that, the need to develop players in India is a must and the clubs should own the responsibility to do that. In the next two years, all clubs must have an academy director, who has necessary qualifications from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
That is a must. Also, the format of the I-League needs to be changed to ensure that all states have the opportunity to compete, or at least have a chance to make it to the I-League. If you look at the set-up in Brazil, the teams can qualify for their domestic league after playing in the local leagues. This way, it is possible to have a wider representation and make the presence of the league pan-India.

An option to do that is to split the country into eight regions, and have a qualification round. So, Bengal will have its own qualification league, Goa will have a league of its own, and so on. Of course, there would be no relegation from the I-League, just re-qualification through the regional leagues.

This would bring football into many more states, allow the teams to develop and have something to aim for. In a massive country like India, that is the only way to ensure participation from all the states, without being unfair to any. Only teams with an academy of their own should be allowed to participate in the I-League. Certain strictness has to be maintained. You can have the youth leagues running alongside the I-League.

But to run a successful school, you need good teachers. In this case, the coaches are the teachers and sadly, India lacks quality in this area. Coach education programmes are crucial and the AIFF, along with the AFC, has to take the responsibility for that. We really need to help the Indian coaches, give them a chance to go outside and see how they work, say for example, in Korea or Japan. The latest I heard about Indian football after Bob left was AIFF’s willingness to have India play a possession-oriented game. That does sound good, doesn’t it? But does anyone know what that means? These days, people look at Barcelona and say, ‘We love the way that team plays. Let’s just play like them…’
The question here is: do you have players who can pass like the Barca players do? Can they run with the ball, and also without it, like those guys do? Do you have the kids coming through a system where they are taught to play that way since they are six or seven years old? Playing a possession-oriented game is not as easy as it is to think about it.

India has to play the way that suits them the most, rather than try and copy someone else. It is a question of the ability of the players and the type of football they can play. In my time, we had some really good players like Mahesh Gawli, John Paul, Debjit Ghosh and Baichung Bhutia. All of them were fighters and were prepared to give everything in each game they played.

So we played in a way where we pressed our oppositions and that made it hard to play against us. So, it all depends on what the current crop of players are like, and of course, the philosophy of the coach.

All said and done, when it comes to Indian football, we always end up saying that the country has huge potential. But we have been saying that for years…

Today, the world is doing everything to get India amongst the football elite. Sadly, it is India, which is stopping itself.

— The writer was the chief coach of the Indian team from 2002-2005