Come On, India, Let's Football!
- Bhalchandra Chorghade

- Jul 1
- 3 min read
When football’s new minnows dream big, India stands still.

The ongoing FIFA World Cup has produced one of the most compelling stories in modern football. Nations once dismissed as outsiders are now sharing the world’s biggest stage with traditional powerhouses. Tiny Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan and Uzbekistan are making their World Cup debuts. DR Congo has returned after more than five decades, while countries such as Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa and New Zealand have also forced their way into the tournament.
The question every Indian football fan must ask is uncomfortable but unavoidable: if these nations can qualify, why can’t India?
This is not about population. India has over 1.4 billion people. Cape Verde has barely half a million. Curaçao has fewer than two lakh residents. Uzbekistan has around 37 million people; Jordan, about 12 million. India has every conceivable demographic advantage. Yet, when the World Cup begins, Indian fans once again become passionate supporters of Brazil, Argentina, England or Portugal because their own national team is nowhere to be seen.
For decades, Indian football administrators have found convenient excuses. Cricket’s dominance. Lack of infrastructure. Poor weather. Limited sporting culture. None of these explanations survive scrutiny anymore.
Croatia reached a World Cup final with a population smaller than Hyderabad. Morocco became the first African nation to reach the semi-finals in 2022. Japan and South Korea transformed themselves into global football powers through long-term planning. Now Uzbekistan, Jordan and Cape Verde have shown that determined football development matters far more than population size or GDP.
Governance Failure
The domestic football ecosystem remains fragmented. Grassroots development exists largely on paper. School football lacks continuity. Youth academies are too few and often disconnected from professional clubs. State associations function with varying degrees of efficiency, while the professional pyramid remains shallow. Coaching standards are improving but nowhere near the scale required for a country of India’s size. Most talented youngsters still have limited access to quality coaching before their teenage years, by which time the developmental gap with leading football nations has already widened.
The Indian Super League undoubtedly improved infrastructure, television visibility and professionalism. But a successful league does not automatically produce a successful national team. The league has too often prioritised short-term commercial interests over systematic player development. Young Indian footballers frequently struggle for meaningful playing time, while promotion and relegation uncertainties have weakened the competitive pyramid beneath the top division.
Another problem is the absence of a unified national football vision. Countries that qualify consistently work on 10- to 20-year roadmaps. India often changes direction with every administrative transition. Projects begin with great fanfare and quietly disappear before delivering results. Football development cannot depend on personalities; it requires institutions.
Talent identification is another glaring weakness. Millions of children play football across the Northeast, Goa, Kerala, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka and several tribal regions. Yet countless gifted players never enter structured development pathways. A nation of India’s scale should have thousands of certified scouts working across districts. Instead, talent frequently depends on luck rather than an organised system.
The roadmap is neither mysterious nor impossible. Football must become an integral part of school education, with structured inter-school and inter-district competitions. Every professional club should operate genuine youth academies linked to local communities. Coaching education must expand dramatically. State leagues should become stronger and financially sustainable. The national federation must function with transparency, stability and accountability. Above all, youth development, not administrative politics, must become the central mission.
The expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams has created more qualification opportunities than ever before. If India cannot qualify even under this expanded format, it will expose the depth of the crisis rather than the strength of the competition.
India has already proved in cricket, hockey, chess, badminton and athletics that excellence is possible when talent meets planning. Football should be no different.
The real tragedy is not that India has never qualified for a FIFA World Cup. The real tragedy is that after nearly eight decades of independence, with enormous resources and one of the world’s largest youth populations, India still lacks a credible pathway to get there.
Until administrators begin treating World Cup qualification as a national project rather than a distant dream, Indian football will remain exactly where it has been for generations—not on the pitch, but in the stands, cheering for someone else’s success.





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