India’s Under-16 squad that beat Iraq in Jordan.

This week, Indian football celebrated a brace — twin triumphs of its junior national teams. First, India’s Under-16 team beat Iraq in Jordan, and a few hours later the Under-20 squad defeated Argentina in Spain. Both wins came at invitational tournaments. Fans went into a frenzy. So did the All India Football Federation (AIFF), which called the results “historic” wins over formidable football nations — and held them up as indication of how well the sport is doing in India. That excitement was, sadly, misplaced.While football thrives at the club level everywhere in the world, India has an unhealthy obsession with the success of its junior national teams. Even as the country’s club football ecosystem, starved of funds, lies in tatters, money is poured into developing a national squad of boys. It’s always country over club.This perhaps stems from our love of cricket and hockey, where the success of the national team is the only kind that India recognises.This uber-fixation with colts is rather recent. It began with the Under-17 team for World Cup 2017 when the boys were sent abroad as part of a two-year preparation for the grand event.The much-celebrated recent wins — while not discounting the effort and achievement of the young footballers — need a reality check. When India beat Iraq 1-0 in a match at the West Asian Football Federation (WAFF) U-16 Championship, it was dubbed as a victory over the “current Asian U-16 champions”. The Iraqi team, though, wasn’t a shadow of the 2016 champions. It was hastily assembled at the last minute under bizarre circumstances.When the Iraqi boys were flying out for this tournament, 17 of 23 players were detained at the Baghdad airport for carrying false passports (they had lied about their ages), leading to life bans for players and team officials. The side that lost 1-0 to India also lost 1-7 to Jordan two days later. In fact, a better benchmark for Coach Bibiano Fernandes’ boys, who will be heading for the Asian U-16 Championship in September, was their 4-0 win over Jordan in the same event.India’s Under-20 team’s 2-1 win over Argentina in a match at the COTIF Cup doesn’t need such strong caveats. It’s a memorable win. Even so, Argentina did not come to the tournament with its best squad, since clubs are not obligated to release their players. Furthermore, Argentina, which went on to win the tournament, had tested its entire bench against India. From Argentina’s starting XI against India, 10 did not start any other game in the tournament — the team played a total of six matches — and the South Americans made no substitutions either. This was understandable, since Argentina had a semifinal match against Uruguay the next day. Yet, this did not stop Parth Jindal, CEO of Bengaluru FC, from celebrating this win over a “fullstrength Argentina U-20”. India has indulged in such exaggerations before.For instance, when India’s U-17 drew 1-1 against a second-string Chile side last year, the then project director of U-17 World Cup Joy Bhattacharya called it a “full-strength Chile”. Or, when India beat Italy’s U-17, which later turned out to be a selection of players from its third and fourth tiers.This is a growing list of isolated results around which AIFF justifies borrowing large amounts of money from the Sports Authority of India and spending it on a small group of boys — of whom, statistically, only a few will graduate to the senior team. Over Rs 15 crore was reportedly spent on the U-17 World Cup team’s exposure tours (it scored zero points in the World Cup and failed to qualify for the U-19 Asian Championships) and, according to reports, about Rs 9 crore will be spent on the tours of U-16 team, which will aim to qualify for the 2019 U-17 World Cup through the AFC Championship. Meanwhile, as per AIFF’s 2014-17 Strategic Plan, youth development and grassroots budget for the entire country averaged less than Rs 6.1 crore per annum.India’s domestic system is flagging with no clarity about the future — there are two rival leagues, the Indian Super League and the AIFF’s I-League, and the football calendar changes every year.The clubs, which complain about an uncertain ecosystem, and the AIFF, which criticises the way clubs invest their money, play a blame game. The AIFF claims a cash crunch. But that doesn’t stop the federation from announcing cash rewards for Olympic medallists from different sports, such as PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik. Who doesn’t want a positive news cycle?Instead of putting all the eggs in one very costly basket of globe-trotting footballers, AIFF should invest in uplifting the state of the domestic game and building from ground up. Then India could create an organic pipeline of talent. Indian football’s finest achievement in recent years hasn’t been the win over Argentina or Iraq: it was Bengaluru FC reaching the final of the AFC Cup, Asia’s second-tier competition, in 2016.Club football pyramid lies at the heart of the game globally and it produces players for national teams. India’s approach is neither sustainable nor smart. In the long run, this fixation with national teams will be counter-productive. Before you know it, this would have set us back rather than push us forward.(The author is a Delhi-based sports writer.)