Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 29

Sol Campbell, the former England footballer, says India is possibly 50 to 100 years behind the world’s top football nations.

Praful Patel, the president of the All India Football Federation, says that hosting the U-17 World Cup has given “us an understanding that we can actually build a world-class Indian team with our boys”.

There’s a bit of a gap between these two statements. Who would you believe, the sportsman or the politician? Probably the sportsman, right? With no disrespect to politicians, the fact is that Campbell’s word will carry more weight than a politician’s when it comes to football.

Local-class

Three years of hard work, training and expense didn’t make the Indian team world-class — it’s possibly just Asian-class, and more likely only regional-class.

It must be recorded, however, that the Indian boys played valiantly in their three group stage matches of the World Cup. They lost 0-3 to USA before playing their best match of the tournament, against Colombia, levelling the score at 1-1 before losing 1-2. Then, in their final group game, they were thrashed 4-0 by Ghana.

India could play in this elite 32-team tournament only because they were the hosts; if they had to qualify for it, as the other teams had to, it is just not possible that they would have made it through the tough Asian qualifying matches.

The fact is that the greatest-ever under-17 footballers assembled in India’s history were far from threatening even in the group stages — they could not draw a game, let alone winning one.

Even draws won’t help — to rise, you need to score. India scored once in their three matches — they had packed their squad of 21 with defenders, and there were only two forwards. Clearly, the coach knew that the team doesn’t have a great creative ability to make goals. The aim was to defend stoutly, hit back on the counterattack, and try to avoid total humiliation. Given the talent available to him, coach Luis Norton de Matos chose the right strategy.

There’s a view that this group of players will improve with time and become competitive against at least Asia’s elite in the senior age-group matches.

Let’s be realistic — that’s not going to happen. Past experience has shown that when India’s junior football teams graduate to the senior level, they don’t improve at a significant rate. Their junior counterparts from elite football countries learn much better skills in much lesser time. The gap between them only increases.

How to improve?

Campbell says that India needs a long-term plan. There’s no one quick-fix answer. A lot of things need to be done rightly, right away, if India are to become competitive at the Asian level — only then can we realistically think of competing at the global level.

The top European and Asian nations do the following:

1) Start kids with recreational football at age 4, and even earlier, and give them expert coaching at age 8, and serious coaching after age 10

2) Their professional clubs have training facilities for little kids, with fun leagues to identify and hone talent

3) Their domestic football is very competitive, with top-class coaching, medical facilities, sports science backing

4) Their leagues have a passionate fan base, with some families supporting their favourite clubs for generations. This boosts the football economy, and clubs can spend more on training players

Tough in India

Studies show 42% of Indian kids are malnourished; if we take the parameters of the top first world countries, it’s likely that actually 50-60% of Indian kids would be deemed malnourished. How are our kids going to compete at the top level against the world’s best?

There’s little or no world-class coaching in India; sports science research is non-existent; parents want their kids to focus on studies and not on sports; most Indian sportspersons in less-glamorous sports come from humble, rural backgrounds, and their aim is to get a government job. The elite discourage their kids from becoming professional sportspersons, and then get angry and complain when India doesn’t do well in international sport.

So, Campbell is right. There needs to be a seismic change in attitudes in India if India are to become competitive in football. India’s three losses in the group stage, and the breathtaking skills shown by the top teams, have made this absolutely clear.

As for the ability to “successfully” organise a global event such as the U-17 World Cup, for which Patel is very happy, the fact is that if the government’s support and funding are available, India can host anything, even the Olympics or the senior World Cup.

But organising events is not a sport, playing football is. It’s this which needs real, long-term planning, real hard work.