Friday 13 June 2014

Indian Football

Indians have been playing football as long as Brazilians or Argentinians. But India is nowhere in the world football scene. Why is the standard of our football so low ? We are said to be 156th in the world rankings. We have never even qualified to play in the World Cup. No Indian footballer has ever played in a European or South American team. Baichung Bhutia was selected by Bury, a low ranking English team, but he was kept on the benches.

I asked this question to P.K. Banerji, former Indian football captain, and former player for Mohun Bagan, when he came to Allahabad in the 1990s, when I was a judge in the Allahabad High Court. At that time he was manager of the Mohun Bagan team, and he had come to Allahabad with the team which played a friendly match with another team.

P. K. Banerji said that this was because of short height and slim bodies of Indians.
I was not at all satisfied with this answer. I think Indian football will never come up to the front ranks in the world unless something drastic is done.

4 comments:

  1. Sir, reason is - we Indians lack passion not only in sports but in most things we do.

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  2. Sir people need to see money and pride in any new endeavour to embrace it. My sense is the youth has already started eyeing it in football. It will take another 15-20 yrs for us to be there

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