Are Indians Still Insisting On Playing World Cup Tournament Barefoot?
Is football a joke in India?
Football is life, a source of income to those who value it, ranging from club owners to coaches, players, and to fans who are being paid for their passion for the sport through betting. With the kind of attention football has secured along with its over ten decades history it wouldn’t be an exaggeration that soccer is truly the most admired game there is.
If this is true for most countries how about India? Do they love football too? Why haven’t they appeared in the Federation Internationale de Football Association world cup for almost 80 years? Were they not physically strong enough to run around for 90 minutes or do they lack skills? why then did they concentrate more on cricket?
The reason India left football
The 1950 FIFA world cup which marked the fourth edition of the competition was held in Brazil between 24 June and 16 July following the cancellation of the 1942 and 1946 editions due to the world war. India was never banned by FIFA, it was the country that stepped aside from participating. India with some other countries qualified to participate in the competition, FIFA decided that seven slots would be given to Europe, six to America, and one to Asia. Of all the four Asian countries invited to the qualification stage three had to withdraw ( Phillippines, Indonesia, and Burma). This meant automatic qualification for India, which was supposed to be the first time India would participate in the tournament.
One of the popular stories you will hear is that FIFA banned India because they insisted on wearing only socks to play their matches, well maybe there is an element of truth in that, but do you think they have been insisting for the past 80 years of the tournament? I believe you will disagree.
Another fact that went viral before the time of modern education in Western Africa is that India played a match against Nigeria at the group stage of the tournament which ended in 99 goals to 1 in favor of India due to magic and incantation used on the pitch. FIFA had to punish India for this. This is completely inconsiderable because no African country was invited for the game and “magic on the pitch’’ is nothing but a phrase to entertain young minds.
Their withdrawal from football during the 1950 FIFA world cup tournament can be given a more proper explanation when you fault the All India Football Federation for their lack of belief in the competition. They believed the Olympics to be of more value than the FIFA world cup. With this, there was no point in wasting resources in an event they held no faith in.
Brazil, the host, who was willing to get everyone on board offered help to the AIFF, they promised to cover the cost of transporting Indian players to the game but they rejected the offer citing that they were having a problem in selecting the team members and inadequate practice days ahead of the tournament.
Accepted facts about India’s disloyalty to football
We can’t really trace India’s refusal to promote football for one reason, we need to consider several angles to explain the situation. Like I said earlier India focuses more on cricket than any other sport making them one of the best cricketers in the entire world. The support, respect, cheers, and the income they get from this sport has rendered football almost useless in the country. You can open the world record to see their international achievements.
Also, there is no organized football league in India at least when compared with other Asian countries. The prevalent leagues are the Indian Super League (ISL), I- League, and a few others. Once again, this is considered another failure for the AIFF for their inability to provide players with proper and enough training pieces of equipment and medical facilities.
I believe that India can always get back to football and achieve great records as they did with cricket, they only need to do the needful by starting from grass root players and leagues.
