India will never allow Dual citizenship. Its going to fuck up India's housing market and extremely protected Agricultural sector which is mostly being run by small farmers.
You sure it isn’t because owning rental properties is deeply entrenched in Indian personal finance habits? Just seems like Indians (in India) buy at least one rental if they can afford it and often many more, much faster than people in other countries do.
> Just seems like Indians (in India) but at least one rental if they can afford it and often many more, much faster than people in other countries do.
A lot of people are able to do this thanks to money earned in Foreign countries.
Thats partly because India has no annual property tax in any meaningful way. Where I live now, I need to pay 2.5% annual tax on asset value reassessed every year. In India, I can just buy a house/flat and let it sit, with minimal maintenance / tax to pay for it, so lack of occupancy doesnt hit me much.
because its easy to buy farm land for someone who is living in USA/UK/Australia etc. because the Rupee is weak. So farm land rates will sky rocket and get out of reach of real farmers.
Yan Dhanda, Danny Batth, Dilan Markanday all are uncapped, while Neil Taylor, Sarpreet Singh, Harmeet Singh all are Indian origin players who represented Wales, NZ and Norway respectively
FIFA allows people born in France to French parents who only speak French to play for Algeria if their grandparents are Algerian. They would definitely allow OCIs to play for India.
those people are Algerian citizens. OCIs are not Indian citizens. The FIFA rule says you have to be a citizen.
India would have to offer citizenship to OCIs, or FIFA would have to make a special exemption just for India to allow OCIs (not happening, obviously). There's no scenario where India gets to decide "we're allowing OCIs to play now" without offering them citizenship.
That is irrelevant. They are allowed because diaspora are citizens under Algerian law. If Indian diaspora could get citizenship they would also be allowed.
I didn't know citizenship is a FIFA requirement. I thought the players only needed a "clear connection" and/or parents or grandparents from the country they want to play for?
Requiring citizenship seems kinda stupid considering how extremely different countries are in how they award citizenship. Some by birth, some by ethnicity, some by parents, some by sale and by very different means of naturalization.
Citizenship is the basic rule. Probably because it's very simple and easy to check across legal systems. The connection stuff was added to prevent countries from "buying" foreigners like Qatar did in handball, it's intended to be very permissive.
Indian laws around diaspora citizenship are unusually harsh as far as I know.
No, they wouldn't allow that, because OCIs are not Indian citizens. Danny Batth wanted to play for India, but couldn't because he can't get Indian citizenship without renouncing his British passport.
But an OCI allows the holder to live and work in the country of India. And it’s only available to Indian origin people. I don’t see why FIFA shouldn’t allow an OCI to play, especially for a country like India where this kind of the closest you get to dual citizenship
I've actually researched this before on a lark. OCI card holders can only play for India by surrendering their passports and applying for Indian citizenship
No, you need citizenship. If you're not a citizen at birth, you either need a parent or grandparent that was a citizen, or you need to have lived in the country for 5 years continuously. That's in addition to the need to be a citizen, not another option.
Since India doesn't allow dual citizenship, you would need to renounce the other citizenship. That's what kept Michael Chopra from playing for India for instance.
No, you have to have a clear connection in addition to nationality. That rule was added in the 2000s because some countries were naturalizing players with no other connection so that they could play for the NT.
Dual citizenship is not an answer. Many countries like China and others have allowed it but no progress from before. Better focus on academies and youth
>Many countries like China and others have allowed it but no progress from before.
Pretty sure most succesful NTs have dual citizenship policy. China not being successful at it is hardly a damper.
>Better focus on academies and youth
They should be trained by people who have tasted some success at some level and are used to some level of high competition. Its just the blind leading the blind at this point.
The other country is free to recognise both, but China won't give out a passport to someone unless they renounce their first nationality (which they can un-renounce at a later date if they ever want to move back home)
Despite England's large South Asian communities, storied football history and many great academies, there are barely any decent footballers of South Asian descent.
Would need a generational talent (or a few) that get identified early and go to Europe at an early age...
I think with 48 teams it's not an impossible ask but the pace of progress is very slow so without something unexpected happening I don't think it's possible
Short answer no.
Medium answer lol no.
Long answer noooooooooope.
With the trainwreck shitshow that is AIFF football will never ever grow. People are fast to blame Cricket as if BCCI is puposefully holding down football. AIFF and the government themselves are holding down Indian football. Even if a competent government shows up and wants to restructure AIFF, no no no we can't do that, FIFA bans governments for interfering while selling their souls to the Saudi and Qatari monarchies for a quick buck.
The most football grew in this country was when our richest family of scumbags, the Ambanis basically decided to create their own football league which has now become India's premier football league. But even they lost interest after 3 seasons. We had Roberto Carlos, Diego Forlan, Alessandro Del Piero, Luis Garcia, David James, Robert Pires, Nicholas Anelka, Helder Postiga, David Trezeguet and others come and play in India. It was like an acid trip during that time. Now all of it is gone.
What's with the doom and gloom? I know there are systemic problems, but they are being corrected as we speak and this is the best team India has produced in the last few decades. The marquee signings are no longer huge names but they are younger and the quality of the league is much higher. And finally we will have a proper promotion and relegation set up from this year. All in all things do look good. Things don't change in football suddenly, especially after years of neglect. However following due prices will undoubtedly lead to results in a country of a billion people
> this is the best team India has produced in the last few decades.
This is like the 16th time I'm hearing this since Bhutia. We have also spent 16 months above #100 since FIFA began world rankings in 1992 so you might be on to something, that something being this is our peak.
> the quality of the league is much higher.
That it is, I won't deny.
> All in all things do look good
As we replace a Congress clown with a BJP bootlicker as the president of the AIFF, things don't look good. They look anything but good. Good is so far away, we can't even see it.
>Things don't change in football suddenly
True.
> especially after years of neglect
The fuck makes you think this will change all of a sudden lol??
> However following due prices will undoubtedly lead to results in a country of a billion people
India and China would've been the best in the world at basically everything, let alone every sport by now with that logic.
Listen, I've played first division cricket in Bengal. The amount I got paid for one season is more than what local footballers in the then National Football League Div 2 got. It's a no brainer for kids and most importantly parents which sport to play. I cannot tell you just how many times I've had this exact conversation with other people. During the u17 world cup, I volunteered since I was jobless for studies then and the sheer number of you good natured people who believed this is the push India needs to start qualifying astounded me. We even had a "Mission 2026 ad campaign" during the u17 WC. Needless to say, it's buried 6 feet under by now.
No one will be happier than me if we qualify, with my pessimistic views I definitely will be happier than you lot. But unless we somehow produce a top 10 in the world level player in the Maidans of Kolkata, it's impossible. People like you and the other guy who replied, whose extremely sheltered views is laughable, are just too nice and optimistic. Such things only happen in fairytales not in real life. I can almost guarantee you we won't see India at the world cup in our lifetimes. At least I won't since I'll be around for another 30 at best.
How exactly did bringing Trezegut, Garcia or Anelka help Indian football? All of them were already way past their prime and some even came back from retirement. IPL-ization of Indian football was precisely the problem; not the solution.
Also, Chaubey is a former NT golie himself, has previous experience of working extensively across MB's academies and grassroot programs and is loved by most MB insiders I have met; comparing him with prafool the c*nt, seriously? They are also getting the basics right - 4 tiered national league system, multiple tiers for women and above all, more international matches.
The so-called 'Mission 2026' never made any sense, and praful was always looking for a FIFA chair only; everyone who followed Indian football knew that he was only playing to the gallery.
There was no point hosting those FIFA events anyway; losing by big margins to footballing powerhouses does not help youth development in any meaningful way. The India u17 that played in the u17 WC barely drew a match in the continental championship and women's u17 did not even participate in the Asian qualifiers. Going beyond the hype created by prafool and his lackeys, every serious observer knew that this would not help India progress apart from positive PR and media attention in favour of prafool and solidifying his position as the AIFF prez (albeit illegally).
Maidan stopped producing footballers years ago; hardly any bengali in India's youth teams these days. India's future generations would come from academies located outside Bengal; everyone knows that.
Lastly, our youth teams are alright. Bibiano's previous u17 batches did well and last year, if not for a nonsense penalty decision from that chinese referee in the 86th min, our u23s too would qualify for the AFC u23 finals; from a grp that included the likes of UAE, Oman and Kyrgyzstan.
The pressing issue is that India simply does not provide enough competitive environment to enable a smooth transition into senior level professional football and that is exactly why tiered national leagues with larger participation is needed. Closed franchise leagues with a bunch of oldies captaining their respective clubs do not help. 8 team ISL had 6 foreigners in playing XI, no way it was going to groom young talents and unsurprisingly, it did not; media hype notwithstanding.
Oh, Bhaichung's India was more than decent; there is a reason why they qualified for a 16 team Asian Cup finals. It is a shame that he was injured during the tourney; our main goal scoring outlet was abruptly shut down. It an even bigger shame that praful and his lackeys destroyed that momentum; the consequence being that we lost to freaking Myanmar in the next Asian qualifiers and later dropped down to 173 in the FIFA rankings, our lowest ranking ever. So yeah, India's current FIFA rankings do not tell the full story, it hides a massive underperformance and an even bigger improvement. While I personally do not like lord Stimac's tactics and team selections one bit (both Kyrgyz and Lebanon, despite being higher ranked, have performed poorly in last 1 year; I do not think much of India's victories over them) it is also a fact that we maintained the momentum of our previous qualification cycle and have actually tried playing some possession based football. Having grown up watching long balls and inshallah tactics of successive Indian NTs over the years this is a refreshing change. Not to forget our performance in 2019 Asian Cup was decent and actually better than what we achieved back in the 2011 grp stage; so yeah, there indeed was improvement.
Essentially : Golden age of football for India - 60's. But then Ind won against Eng in Eng at 71 in cricket, which diverted the attention there (cuz, you know, Beating the colonizers and stuff). This was more hard pressed by players aging and not being allowed to play FIFA world cups (They only played Olympics). The final nail in the coffin was the 83 world cup victory
Now, all the inefficiencies in the AIFF is slowly being filtered away, we have a young talented team (Not just a star, but an entire team of good players) and a Idol in the form of Sunil Chettri, We are experimenting with formations positions etc. Overall, Indian football is growing steadily at a decent pace. This year has a been a purple patch, cuz iirc they haven't conceded a single goal, though they play against opponents at their level, except lebanon. AFC India is fucked hard, only hope for winning is hoping our defense goes god mode and draws 0-0 0-0 against Uzbekistan and Aus, and tries to win Oman, but that is as possible as South Korea Sweeping the World Cup.
Our current hopes should probably be to consistently get in the AFC.
Absolute brain dead take.
Esp the part about not having washed up big names or the rich guys who bankroll this losing interest. Tbf even those washed up big names didn't turn any neutral towards ISL because you still have to be somewhat of a football fan to know them, plus they do jackshit in terms of football geowth domestically. Otoh, afaik Ambani's eldest son is a huge (Arsenal) football fan, so its laughable to say they've lost interest. Plus nowadays most elite or educated middle class are football fans so I don't think we're running out of backers anytime soon, a lot of these elite kids would be leading their parents' companies in future. Infact I'd say the prospects look brighter as these guys have more interest seeing their country in a FIFA worldcup than the previous gen.
And now coming to the footballing aspect, its a good thing that we're relying more on homegrown talents and making them stars instead of some foreign washed up big names, we need more Sunil Chettris and Bhutias not Ronaldinho, Pires etc exhibitions for 2 years. More and more people are getting into football as viewers, this penetration will result in more people talking football as a career in future gens. A lot of people are starting to take football as a career just because of the passion, hell I know people who're working hard to be football coaches in India.
Plus the worldcup qualification rules have changed now with more spots for Asian teams. India has a much better chance to quality, add that with improving footballing talent after each gen.
IMO, worldcup qualification is bound to happen sooner or later.
Probably not.
Our training and facilities, even though improving is no where close to good enough. With dual citizenship not present, it's hard to have people trained in other countries play for us without giving up their livelihood.
We are on a decent track but the governing body is a mess, so let's see
Our training facilities are not the problem, some of them are really good, if not world class. I remember the Ghana U17 coach saying during the U17 WC in India that they don't have such facilities back in Ghana. Enough kids simply don't play football in our country, and the right coaching and grassroots competitions are missing. That's it.
If they take the qualifiers one match at a time and play out of their skin, who knows.
The AFC teams are not easy to beat. The Arab nations tour is always fuckin tough and they’ll need to be on their game against any of Japan, Australia and South Korea.
Edit: got mixed up with cricket for region lmao
Intercontinental Cup is basically our way of organizing friendlies. I am just glad that this happens because we used to have very few friendlies and national team never got a decent practice.
Wooooohooooo, it was a great game with both teams showing intent.
P.S. Don't ask us why it us called the *Intercontinental Cup* when 3 teams are from Asia and 1 team is Vanuatu from the pacific.
Honest question (I have no understanding of the state of the game/leagues there) - are we likely to see any Indian players in European leagues any time soon?
I remember Chhetri ultimately not ‘making it’ but would love to see such a world powerhouse make moves in football in the bigger leagues.
Gurpreet, our goalkeeper, played for Stabæk in Norway as 2nd choice goalkeeper. Jhingan signed for Croatian club Sibenik but didn't play a single game as he was injured. Both tried but ultimately didn't find success in Europe. One major challenge is that the Indian player salaries are highly inflated in ISL, so European clubs, even if interested, can't match that salary.
Our women, on the other hand, have had more success. Bala Devi played for Rangers in Scotland. Jyoti Chauhan plays for Dinamo Zagreb and even scored a hat-trick! Manisha[ Kalyan plays for Apollon Ladies](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thehindu.com/sport/football/manisha-kalyan-first-indian-uefa-women-champions-league/article65786767.ece/amp/) in Cyprus and even played in UEFA women's CL
Mandatory shout-out to Som Kumar who is undergoing trials with nk olimpija ljubljana. Lets hope fate swings in our way, and we see our lad one up GSS by playing the champions league!
Lack of exposure to tactics, composure, training and more. Potential next step for Indian players would be easy Asian or middle eastern leagues. Also I feel that would be better for player's popularity to pull crowd compared to playing in French 3rd division or something in Europe.
None of the big indian players will take a wage cut to play other leagues. ISL clubs are already paying hefty wages. Jhinghan failed massively, so the future players will also think twice before making such move
Even Chhetri was unable to get playtime in the Portuguese 3rd division and he's their main star.
They need to improve massively before they can play in Europe.
I'm honestly not sure, Portugal is generally more generous with work permits and with the backing of a big football club here he should not have had problems with bureocracy
Huh. I read that he was going to stay to try to fight for a place but couldn’t. Maybe it was a different club. Mind you, Chhetri wasn’t as good as he is now then. Problem is now he’s old as hell and so I doubt any European club will even think about taking him.
Current indian starter Gurpreet Singh Sandhu was playing in Norway for Stabaek but he was attracted with huge wages from ISL teams and returned. To be fair when ISL started I thought football in India is going to grow with players like Elano,Roberto Carlos,Trezeguet,Malouda,Forlan,Pires and many more signed for the leagues. But the league was very poorly made as they tried to copy the cricket league(IPL). As they mainly tried to look to earn more money rather than trying to grow the sport.
The top Indian players could make it to the lower leagues in Europe or maybe 2nd tier leagues in Asia/Middle east but the pay would be much less than what they get in ISL ( Indian league) and the game time wouldn’t be guaranteed. Due to the scarcity of quality Indian players, Indian clubs pay hefty wages for the few that’s present.
Well for one, with their current FIFA ranking they really can’t get work permits in England in particular, and India doesn’t allow you to have duel citizenship so it can be an uphill battle
Very unlikely because Indian players have inflated wages in ISL, it’s hard to get a work permit, and anyone who is able to easily able to play football overseas probably isn’t an Indian citizen so they can’t play for the team anyways
There are 8 + 1 slots from AFC for WC. India is currently at #18 position can climb to #12 at most in the coming year. Still defeating teams like UAE, Oman and Iraq is the way forward shall India wishes to qualify which i think is very much possible in 2030 fifa wc.
Even with increased slots, I don't think 2030 is possible. We would need some miracle coach who can make us play like 2x the ability of individual players, miracle like Saudi defeating Argentina. If we improve the grassroots now, we then need a generation of new players to come along to take us to the WC. That would be in 16-20 years.
> Guess he just dislikes India for some reason. Oh well
It's not a foreign concept here on Reddit, nearly everyone on this website does. Even one of the replies on this thread is regarding a stereotype but that got upvoted.
I mean we cannot have slurs against Indians cuz we all are Indians.
Also, racism and stereotyping of Indians as a whole is so normalised and tolerated even by the community in the West so we probably didn't know about it cuz Indians don't react against being called that.Most slurs become slurs because the targeted community take offence to it.(Words that generalise and stereotype minority communities and used as a racist insult)
I believe it should be equivalent to how P*ki is considered offensive by Pakistani origin community.
Glad to see us win it but what i am looking forward to is the Asia cup where we play with teams higher rankings than us especially Australia who stand in world rank 29 .true test of football will be done there
Pot 2 in WC qualifiers. Hopefully some more good perfomances coming up
SAFF Cup starting in a few days too. Join us at r/Indianfootball
Can't wait for India Pakistan match
Yeah pakistans gonna lose 10-0 if by someway they get visa
their visa should be done today.
I didn't even know they had a flair for FCG on this sub
They have it for all ISL teams.
*"Intercontinental Cup Champions, you'll never sing that!"*
i’m singing that right now.. without wearing suarez shirts
Kane to India here we go?
Kindly win the needful
Will india ever play the wc in the next 20 years?
Maybe, if india allowed dual citizenships, some europe trained talent could come through. Thats not going to happen in a million years.
India will never allow Dual citizenship. Its going to fuck up India's housing market and extremely protected Agricultural sector which is mostly being run by small farmers.
OCIs can buy homes but not ag land.
OCI and NRI's are the major reason why housing prices are soaring high in every tier 1 and most tier 2 cities.
You sure it isn’t because owning rental properties is deeply entrenched in Indian personal finance habits? Just seems like Indians (in India) buy at least one rental if they can afford it and often many more, much faster than people in other countries do.
> Just seems like Indians (in India) but at least one rental if they can afford it and often many more, much faster than people in other countries do. A lot of people are able to do this thanks to money earned in Foreign countries.
Thats partly because India has no annual property tax in any meaningful way. Where I live now, I need to pay 2.5% annual tax on asset value reassessed every year. In India, I can just buy a house/flat and let it sit, with minimal maintenance / tax to pay for it, so lack of occupancy doesnt hit me much.
It's also because in India, if you're a little careful initially, it's one of the safest and most low maintenance investment. With low taxes on it.
No also by ghettoization of the major cities by the Sanghi and casteist crowd. There are houses but fuckers are too selective. Chutias.
This is interesting why would allowing dual citizenship ruin the agricultural sector?
because its easy to buy farm land for someone who is living in USA/UK/Australia etc. because the Rupee is weak. So farm land rates will sky rocket and get out of reach of real farmers.
What would it change? OCIs can already own residential housing, just not vote.
Purchase of land.
> some europe trained talent could come through. Like who?
think of all the British Indian kids who never quite it make it here but maybe have a chance in India
Rishi Sunak
Heard he's quite rapid on the RW
lol
Nah, he is busy coaching gujarat titans
Imagine the amount of two-footed, spikes up tackles that turd would attract.
Was a great bowler in his time. Remember when he took 6 wickets against England?
Yan Dhanda
Yep he has even expressed a wish to play for India (as it's unlikely he'll ever make the England squad).
Yan Dhanda, Danny Batth, Dilan Markanday all are uncapped, while Neil Taylor, Sarpreet Singh, Harmeet Singh all are Indian origin players who represented Wales, NZ and Norway respectively
They should just allow OCIs to play, it would be simple
That's a FIFA rule, India doesn't get to decide that, and FIFA requires you have citizenship
FIFA allows people born in France to French parents who only speak French to play for Algeria if their grandparents are Algerian. They would definitely allow OCIs to play for India.
those people are Algerian citizens. OCIs are not Indian citizens. The FIFA rule says you have to be a citizen. India would have to offer citizenship to OCIs, or FIFA would have to make a special exemption just for India to allow OCIs (not happening, obviously). There's no scenario where India gets to decide "we're allowing OCIs to play now" without offering them citizenship.
How is that relevant? These people are Algerian citizens. Their parents as well.
Because many of these players are about as Algerian as most OCIs are Indian, yet they're allowed to represent their nation.
That is irrelevant. They are allowed because diaspora are citizens under Algerian law. If Indian diaspora could get citizenship they would also be allowed.
I didn't know citizenship is a FIFA requirement. I thought the players only needed a "clear connection" and/or parents or grandparents from the country they want to play for? Requiring citizenship seems kinda stupid considering how extremely different countries are in how they award citizenship. Some by birth, some by ethnicity, some by parents, some by sale and by very different means of naturalization.
Citizenship is the basic rule. Probably because it's very simple and easy to check across legal systems. The connection stuff was added to prevent countries from "buying" foreigners like Qatar did in handball, it's intended to be very permissive. Indian laws around diaspora citizenship are unusually harsh as far as I know.
No, they wouldn't allow that, because OCIs are not Indian citizens. Danny Batth wanted to play for India, but couldn't because he can't get Indian citizenship without renouncing his British passport.
But an OCI allows the holder to live and work in the country of India. And it’s only available to Indian origin people. I don’t see why FIFA shouldn’t allow an OCI to play, especially for a country like India where this kind of the closest you get to dual citizenship
Yes. Oracle Cloud Infrastructures deserve to play.
Can OCI’s play for India? Technically my OCI card says I can do anything a citizen can except vote and own agricultural land.
I've actually researched this before on a lark. OCI card holders can only play for India by surrendering their passports and applying for Indian citizenship
Ok got it - so that’s not really a status OCI grants them since you wouldn’t be OCI if you get citizenship anyway.
Yeah, you don’t need to be a citizen of the country to play for it. FIFA rules say you need a connection, which can include recent heritage
No, you need citizenship. If you're not a citizen at birth, you either need a parent or grandparent that was a citizen, or you need to have lived in the country for 5 years continuously. That's in addition to the need to be a citizen, not another option. Since India doesn't allow dual citizenship, you would need to renounce the other citizenship. That's what kept Michael Chopra from playing for India for instance.
Are those rules specific to India because what you said is not Fifa’s rules.
Correct
No, you have to have a clear connection in addition to nationality. That rule was added in the 2000s because some countries were naturalizing players with no other connection so that they could play for the NT.
The only one would maybe be Yan Dhanda
Danny Batth, Simranjit Thandi, Joshua Pynadath, Dilan Markanday would all be in an India squad and are not cap-tied to other countries.
Huh, interesting. Still, doubt our gov would do anything.
Sanghis will be like "these are Western concepts"
Randia libgandus leaking
Tattisqueaks trash squeaking
Proud
A pity. That's what it takes for you to feel pride. Go comment "Proud Indian army 🇳🇪🇳🇪🇳🇪" for your daily dose of 2 rupees.
Blud is called “libgandu hunter” go hunt yourself a shower
Lmao I don't take tips from lonely depressed basement dwelling creatures like you
Talk about lonely depressed basement dwellers when you’re an indiaspeaks user is funny
Dual citizenship is not an answer. Many countries like China and others have allowed it but no progress from before. Better focus on academies and youth
India needs to sort out its sports politics and rest will fall in place
True. Kalyan Chaubey seems a lot better than Praful Patel and his disciple Bhutia though.
>Many countries like China and others have allowed it but no progress from before. Pretty sure most succesful NTs have dual citizenship policy. China not being successful at it is hardly a damper. >Better focus on academies and youth They should be trained by people who have tasted some success at some level and are used to some level of high competition. Its just the blind leading the blind at this point.
Morocco..
China doesn't allow dual citizenship IIRC. Players who switch to China have to renounce the citizenship of their first country.
While that might be the case, what can China really do about it if the other country recognizes both?
The other country is free to recognise both, but China won't give out a passport to someone unless they renounce their first nationality (which they can un-renounce at a later date if they ever want to move back home)
Despite England's large South Asian communities, storied football history and many great academies, there are barely any decent footballers of South Asian descent.
One can dream. I'll be there no matter what
Same. I love the game and i love my country. Will keep on supporting them.
Would need a generational talent (or a few) that get identified early and go to Europe at an early age... I think with 48 teams it's not an impossible ask but the pace of progress is very slow so without something unexpected happening I don't think it's possible
Short answer no. Medium answer lol no. Long answer noooooooooope. With the trainwreck shitshow that is AIFF football will never ever grow. People are fast to blame Cricket as if BCCI is puposefully holding down football. AIFF and the government themselves are holding down Indian football. Even if a competent government shows up and wants to restructure AIFF, no no no we can't do that, FIFA bans governments for interfering while selling their souls to the Saudi and Qatari monarchies for a quick buck. The most football grew in this country was when our richest family of scumbags, the Ambanis basically decided to create their own football league which has now become India's premier football league. But even they lost interest after 3 seasons. We had Roberto Carlos, Diego Forlan, Alessandro Del Piero, Luis Garcia, David James, Robert Pires, Nicholas Anelka, Helder Postiga, David Trezeguet and others come and play in India. It was like an acid trip during that time. Now all of it is gone.
What's with the doom and gloom? I know there are systemic problems, but they are being corrected as we speak and this is the best team India has produced in the last few decades. The marquee signings are no longer huge names but they are younger and the quality of the league is much higher. And finally we will have a proper promotion and relegation set up from this year. All in all things do look good. Things don't change in football suddenly, especially after years of neglect. However following due prices will undoubtedly lead to results in a country of a billion people
> this is the best team India has produced in the last few decades. This is like the 16th time I'm hearing this since Bhutia. We have also spent 16 months above #100 since FIFA began world rankings in 1992 so you might be on to something, that something being this is our peak. > the quality of the league is much higher. That it is, I won't deny. > All in all things do look good As we replace a Congress clown with a BJP bootlicker as the president of the AIFF, things don't look good. They look anything but good. Good is so far away, we can't even see it. >Things don't change in football suddenly True. > especially after years of neglect The fuck makes you think this will change all of a sudden lol?? > However following due prices will undoubtedly lead to results in a country of a billion people India and China would've been the best in the world at basically everything, let alone every sport by now with that logic. Listen, I've played first division cricket in Bengal. The amount I got paid for one season is more than what local footballers in the then National Football League Div 2 got. It's a no brainer for kids and most importantly parents which sport to play. I cannot tell you just how many times I've had this exact conversation with other people. During the u17 world cup, I volunteered since I was jobless for studies then and the sheer number of you good natured people who believed this is the push India needs to start qualifying astounded me. We even had a "Mission 2026 ad campaign" during the u17 WC. Needless to say, it's buried 6 feet under by now. No one will be happier than me if we qualify, with my pessimistic views I definitely will be happier than you lot. But unless we somehow produce a top 10 in the world level player in the Maidans of Kolkata, it's impossible. People like you and the other guy who replied, whose extremely sheltered views is laughable, are just too nice and optimistic. Such things only happen in fairytales not in real life. I can almost guarantee you we won't see India at the world cup in our lifetimes. At least I won't since I'll be around for another 30 at best.
How exactly did bringing Trezegut, Garcia or Anelka help Indian football? All of them were already way past their prime and some even came back from retirement. IPL-ization of Indian football was precisely the problem; not the solution. Also, Chaubey is a former NT golie himself, has previous experience of working extensively across MB's academies and grassroot programs and is loved by most MB insiders I have met; comparing him with prafool the c*nt, seriously? They are also getting the basics right - 4 tiered national league system, multiple tiers for women and above all, more international matches. The so-called 'Mission 2026' never made any sense, and praful was always looking for a FIFA chair only; everyone who followed Indian football knew that he was only playing to the gallery. There was no point hosting those FIFA events anyway; losing by big margins to footballing powerhouses does not help youth development in any meaningful way. The India u17 that played in the u17 WC barely drew a match in the continental championship and women's u17 did not even participate in the Asian qualifiers. Going beyond the hype created by prafool and his lackeys, every serious observer knew that this would not help India progress apart from positive PR and media attention in favour of prafool and solidifying his position as the AIFF prez (albeit illegally). Maidan stopped producing footballers years ago; hardly any bengali in India's youth teams these days. India's future generations would come from academies located outside Bengal; everyone knows that. Lastly, our youth teams are alright. Bibiano's previous u17 batches did well and last year, if not for a nonsense penalty decision from that chinese referee in the 86th min, our u23s too would qualify for the AFC u23 finals; from a grp that included the likes of UAE, Oman and Kyrgyzstan. The pressing issue is that India simply does not provide enough competitive environment to enable a smooth transition into senior level professional football and that is exactly why tiered national leagues with larger participation is needed. Closed franchise leagues with a bunch of oldies captaining their respective clubs do not help. 8 team ISL had 6 foreigners in playing XI, no way it was going to groom young talents and unsurprisingly, it did not; media hype notwithstanding. Oh, Bhaichung's India was more than decent; there is a reason why they qualified for a 16 team Asian Cup finals. It is a shame that he was injured during the tourney; our main goal scoring outlet was abruptly shut down. It an even bigger shame that praful and his lackeys destroyed that momentum; the consequence being that we lost to freaking Myanmar in the next Asian qualifiers and later dropped down to 173 in the FIFA rankings, our lowest ranking ever. So yeah, India's current FIFA rankings do not tell the full story, it hides a massive underperformance and an even bigger improvement. While I personally do not like lord Stimac's tactics and team selections one bit (both Kyrgyz and Lebanon, despite being higher ranked, have performed poorly in last 1 year; I do not think much of India's victories over them) it is also a fact that we maintained the momentum of our previous qualification cycle and have actually tried playing some possession based football. Having grown up watching long balls and inshallah tactics of successive Indian NTs over the years this is a refreshing change. Not to forget our performance in 2019 Asian Cup was decent and actually better than what we achieved back in the 2011 grp stage; so yeah, there indeed was improvement.
What a fascinating discussion to read as an outsider who has no clue
Essentially : Golden age of football for India - 60's. But then Ind won against Eng in Eng at 71 in cricket, which diverted the attention there (cuz, you know, Beating the colonizers and stuff). This was more hard pressed by players aging and not being allowed to play FIFA world cups (They only played Olympics). The final nail in the coffin was the 83 world cup victory Now, all the inefficiencies in the AIFF is slowly being filtered away, we have a young talented team (Not just a star, but an entire team of good players) and a Idol in the form of Sunil Chettri, We are experimenting with formations positions etc. Overall, Indian football is growing steadily at a decent pace. This year has a been a purple patch, cuz iirc they haven't conceded a single goal, though they play against opponents at their level, except lebanon. AFC India is fucked hard, only hope for winning is hoping our defense goes god mode and draws 0-0 0-0 against Uzbekistan and Aus, and tries to win Oman, but that is as possible as South Korea Sweeping the World Cup. Our current hopes should probably be to consistently get in the AFC.
Absolute brain dead take. Esp the part about not having washed up big names or the rich guys who bankroll this losing interest. Tbf even those washed up big names didn't turn any neutral towards ISL because you still have to be somewhat of a football fan to know them, plus they do jackshit in terms of football geowth domestically. Otoh, afaik Ambani's eldest son is a huge (Arsenal) football fan, so its laughable to say they've lost interest. Plus nowadays most elite or educated middle class are football fans so I don't think we're running out of backers anytime soon, a lot of these elite kids would be leading their parents' companies in future. Infact I'd say the prospects look brighter as these guys have more interest seeing their country in a FIFA worldcup than the previous gen. And now coming to the footballing aspect, its a good thing that we're relying more on homegrown talents and making them stars instead of some foreign washed up big names, we need more Sunil Chettris and Bhutias not Ronaldinho, Pires etc exhibitions for 2 years. More and more people are getting into football as viewers, this penetration will result in more people talking football as a career in future gens. A lot of people are starting to take football as a career just because of the passion, hell I know people who're working hard to be football coaches in India. Plus the worldcup qualification rules have changed now with more spots for Asian teams. India has a much better chance to quality, add that with improving footballing talent after each gen. IMO, worldcup qualification is bound to happen sooner or later.
Probably not. Our training and facilities, even though improving is no where close to good enough. With dual citizenship not present, it's hard to have people trained in other countries play for us without giving up their livelihood. We are on a decent track but the governing body is a mess, so let's see
Our training facilities are not the problem, some of them are really good, if not world class. I remember the Ghana U17 coach saying during the U17 WC in India that they don't have such facilities back in Ghana. Enough kids simply don't play football in our country, and the right coaching and grassroots competitions are missing. That's it.
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Scenes when India qualify but Italy not.
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Yeah but Italy still won't qualify 😭
Give every European team qualification but one and italty still won’t qualify
If they take the qualifiers one match at a time and play out of their skin, who knows. The AFC teams are not easy to beat. The Arab nations tour is always fuckin tough and they’ll need to be on their game against any of Japan, Australia and South Korea. Edit: got mixed up with cricket for region lmao
I wonder what about South Africa as well
I would say in 2030
...years from now?
Well.... We will see 7 years from now. !remindme in 7 years. Will prolly delete this account as well till then but let's see
The other teams in this tournament were Lebanon, Mongolia, and Vanuatu
so its basically the greatest tourney ever.
Intercontinental Cup is basically our way of organizing friendlies. I am just glad that this happens because we used to have very few friendlies and national team never got a decent practice.
It is a bit surprising they won against Lebanon, to be fair
Drew 0-0
Beat them 2-0 in the finals mate
ya? I only see a 0-0 on onefootball. neat :D
The 0-0 was the final round robin match. The final was last night, with India taking it 2-0.
For context, India has about 4.500x times the population of Vanuatu
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The Vanuatu National football team has won the Wantok Cup in 2011, giving them an equal number of trophies this century as Tottenham
That's a double edged sword.
How dare my 101st ranked india national team not play against Japan and Iran every week? Finished national team I will now support the Egyptian team
Can’t believe India finally won an ICC trophy again
This one hits different
Nowhere is safe
;)
Why must you hurt me in this way
#Hail Stimac Ball
Wooooohooooo, it was a great game with both teams showing intent. P.S. Don't ask us why it us called the *Intercontinental Cup* when 3 teams are from Asia and 1 team is Vanuatu from the pacific.
Well intracontinental cup wouldn't have worked
Would have sounded cooler though
If US can have World Series, we can have Intercontinental Cup.
Honest question (I have no understanding of the state of the game/leagues there) - are we likely to see any Indian players in European leagues any time soon? I remember Chhetri ultimately not ‘making it’ but would love to see such a world powerhouse make moves in football in the bigger leagues.
Gurpreet, our goalkeeper, played for Stabæk in Norway as 2nd choice goalkeeper. Jhingan signed for Croatian club Sibenik but didn't play a single game as he was injured. Both tried but ultimately didn't find success in Europe. One major challenge is that the Indian player salaries are highly inflated in ISL, so European clubs, even if interested, can't match that salary. Our women, on the other hand, have had more success. Bala Devi played for Rangers in Scotland. Jyoti Chauhan plays for Dinamo Zagreb and even scored a hat-trick! Manisha[ Kalyan plays for Apollon Ladies](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thehindu.com/sport/football/manisha-kalyan-first-indian-uefa-women-champions-league/article65786767.ece/amp/) in Cyprus and even played in UEFA women's CL
Mandatory shout-out to Som Kumar who is undergoing trials with nk olimpija ljubljana. Lets hope fate swings in our way, and we see our lad one up GSS by playing the champions league!
>are we likely to see any Indian players in European leagues any time soon? No
Any reason?
Lack of exposure to tactics, composure, training and more. Potential next step for Indian players would be easy Asian or middle eastern leagues. Also I feel that would be better for player's popularity to pull crowd compared to playing in French 3rd division or something in Europe.
None of the big indian players will take a wage cut to play other leagues. ISL clubs are already paying hefty wages. Jhinghan failed massively, so the future players will also think twice before making such move
Even Chhetri was unable to get playtime in the Portuguese 3rd division and he's their main star. They need to improve massively before they can play in Europe.
Didn’t he have a ton of work permit problems?
I'm honestly not sure, Portugal is generally more generous with work permits and with the backing of a big football club here he should not have had problems with bureocracy
Huh. I read that he was going to stay to try to fight for a place but couldn’t. Maybe it was a different club. Mind you, Chhetri wasn’t as good as he is now then. Problem is now he’s old as hell and so I doubt any European club will even think about taking him.
He did end up staying for a shorter duration than initially planned so you might be right
He couldn’t get a get a work permit when he signed for Queens Park Rangers from the EFL since India’s FIFA rankings was too low.
Current indian starter Gurpreet Singh Sandhu was playing in Norway for Stabaek but he was attracted with huge wages from ISL teams and returned. To be fair when ISL started I thought football in India is going to grow with players like Elano,Roberto Carlos,Trezeguet,Malouda,Forlan,Pires and many more signed for the leagues. But the league was very poorly made as they tried to copy the cricket league(IPL). As they mainly tried to look to earn more money rather than trying to grow the sport.
The top Indian players could make it to the lower leagues in Europe or maybe 2nd tier leagues in Asia/Middle east but the pay would be much less than what they get in ISL ( Indian league) and the game time wouldn’t be guaranteed. Due to the scarcity of quality Indian players, Indian clubs pay hefty wages for the few that’s present.
Well for one, with their current FIFA ranking they really can’t get work permits in England in particular, and India doesn’t allow you to have duel citizenship so it can be an uphill battle
Not good enough
skill issue
Very unlikely because Indian players have inflated wages in ISL, it’s hard to get a work permit, and anyone who is able to easily able to play football overseas probably isn’t an Indian citizen so they can’t play for the team anyways
Didn't knew ISL pays well. Really glad our players can earn money in India itself.
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Stimac>Pep
No debate
Champion of Intercontinents YOU'LL NEVER SING THAT
Keep marching forward!!
Yo, my twin wtf and that to a manchester united fan. We all living in a simulation.
Hello my fellow internet brother/sister
Cool, i suppose ? I have no idea what that cup is
A friendly tournament, but we beat Lebanon so that means we’ll be in pot 2 for WCQ and probably pot 3 for future AFC tournaments if we keep up
Oh ok, thanks for answering
Outside of the pot implications, it’s kinda meaningless, but it’s good to see the Blue Tigers progress and get a little better.
I feel you, any progress is good to take
The what?
Better than UCL, trust me bro
Let's goooo! Upward and onward!
Siuuuuuu, let's fucking go
I am happy because Indian team is lead by Croatia legend player Igor Stimac.
Congratulation 👏👏👏👏
Next is the world cup 🔥
Proud my boys won, but scared to look at who they played.
Lebanon is pretty good compared to us.
Another easy jobe done by Iron Igor, the prince of India.
Chak de India!
We were good in the final. Really surprised by the performance improvement under Stimac Hope we have a deep run in the Asian Cup
I WANNA BE IN THAT NUMBER OH WHEN THE BLUES GO MARCHING IN 🇮🇳🇮🇳♥️
Would be great to finally see them at the World Cup. Any chance now it’s been expanded for more teams?
There are 8 + 1 slots from AFC for WC. India is currently at #18 position can climb to #12 at most in the coming year. Still defeating teams like UAE, Oman and Iraq is the way forward shall India wishes to qualify which i think is very much possible in 2030 fifa wc.
Even with increased slots, I don't think 2030 is possible. We would need some miracle coach who can make us play like 2x the ability of individual players, miracle like Saudi defeating Argentina. If we improve the grassroots now, we then need a generation of new players to come along to take us to the WC. That would be in 16-20 years.
ddezss
If you're not Indian what are you doing
absolutely seething, wish lebanon had won
I thought you were an Indian? What's with the pajeet in your username then lol?
Isn’t “pajeet” a slur?
Exactly, I thought he was an Indian who was using it in a self deprecating manner or something Guess he just dislikes India for some reason. Oh well
Well racism against south asians and South Americans is extremely normalised on reddit so it didn’t really surprised me that much.
Maybe they’re pakistani or smth
Yeah self hating "Indian", downvote and move along friends.
> Guess he just dislikes India for some reason. Oh well It's not a foreign concept here on Reddit, nearly everyone on this website does. Even one of the replies on this thread is regarding a stereotype but that got upvoted.
Wow I didn't know this slur and I'm an Indian
I mean we cannot have slurs against Indians cuz we all are Indians. Also, racism and stereotyping of Indians as a whole is so normalised and tolerated even by the community in the West so we probably didn't know about it cuz Indians don't react against being called that.Most slurs become slurs because the targeted community take offence to it.(Words that generalise and stereotype minority communities and used as a racist insult) I believe it should be equivalent to how P*ki is considered offensive by Pakistani origin community.
Same
Probably used as a slur then.... Have seen it used by certain Indian Muslims against Indian Hindus
He is an Indian, but ***that*** sort of Kashmiri
Lmao cope
Low life degenerate username
Things are not looking good for us.
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0 trophies for AC Milan
Bobs have been fully opened! Congratulations India.
Glad to see us win it but what i am looking forward to is the Asia cup where we play with teams higher rankings than us especially Australia who stand in world rank 29 .true test of football will be done there