It’s said that people power always rules. However, this cannot be said true when it comes to India’s stature in World Soccer. A country with 1.3 billion people and millions of sports-crazy fans still fails to produce 11 top players who can make India’s presence felt on the global arena. The biggest irony is that India is currently languishing at 145th position in the latest FIFA rankings.
No Indian soccer player has been able to make it to the world stage. Some of them tried hard, but hardly left any impact. Baichung Bhutia is the only exception, as he played for Bury in the 1999-2000 season, however, failed to contribute anything.
Forget about the World Cup and Olympics, Indian soccer team failed to qualify even for the Asia Cup, which is a national shame. Once upon a time, India ranked high among the Asian countries. While other countries made remarkable growth in the last few decade, India slided down to the bottom.
Ironically, India holds a unique record in Olympic Football. Neville D’Souza from India was the first player to score a hat-trick in Olympic Football. That record remained intact for a long time. He achieved that milestone in the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. India finished fourth in that Olympic Games.
India, indeed had a golden era in football from 1950 to 1960. India holds another dubious record. It qualified for the World Cup football in 1950, but did not participate, as it did not have enough foreign exchange to send the team there. What a tragedy! Thereafter, it never qualified. Another version of the story says that India pulled out because FIFA did not let them play in bare feet. Whatever, now people in football world do not even know that India has a football team.
Politics and lack of interest has completely ruined Indian football. Recently, the team revived some hope by winning the Nehru Cup tournament despite the presence of higher-ranked teams. However, it yet again failed to qualify for the Asia Cup after going down to Lebanon and later holding them to a draw.
Unless some drastic action is taken both at ground and top level, Indian football does not seem to have a future. There are no dearth of soccer talents in India. But they need to be properly utilized. India has a long way to go before it gives a real fight to the International teams. And, it seems a uphill task for the time being.

Article Courtesy of: http://www.breakingnewsonline.net