The Beautiful Game

Qatar World Cup 2022

FIFA World Cup Kicks off in just 2 days. It received and is still receiving a lot of criticism for being held in Qatar, A country with poor human rights record, No free media, highly censored and controlled. Big names from the Footballing Industry have openly criticized and boycotted from visiting or supporting the tournament this time. Even former FIFA President Sepp Blatter (a guy well known for corruption himself) have admitted that it was a mistake awarding Qatar the hosting rights for WC. Denmark, a team competing in the tournament, they have redesigned their Jersey to kind of fade out appearance, to show their solidarity and support for the lives lost in the building up and organization of the WC.

Even for Fans, Qatari authorities have given strict warnings regarding food, drinks, appearance, slogans, media freedom and even attitude and behavior. They are strictly advised not to wear short dresses, exposing body parts, not to eat some specific food items, to respect specific time periods of the day, chanting, slogans, celebration etc. Even they openly prohibit LGBTQ.

(Opinion: Don't opt for hosting rights for such a beautiful game if you want to limit it to this level. If you want to get respect, respect others.)

Indian Football

Talking about India. It is so disheartening to see the downfall of the game in our country in the past half century, We used to win the Asian championship during the 50s and 60s, used to qualify for the actual WC, Used to give tough competition to big European names. It was common for us to qualify for Olympics in Football. Now we rank some 105-106 in the world. Despite being second most populous country in the world, we are not able to give just fine Football to the world. We struggle with our neighboring countries only. At the same time, Croatia a nation with population less than 4 Million reached the World cup final in 2018 held in Russia. Their economy is way less than ours, population not even considerable with respect to ours, still they are the mighty Footballing giants and we are quite poor. Croatian midfielder Luka Modric even won the Balon d'or in 2018 for his performances.

In our entire history we never qualified for the World cup even for once, we did qualified in 1950 but withdrew from it, because FIFA would not let us allow play bare foot as demanded by our boys back then. Today we have to play qualifiers just to play qualifiers for FIFA WC.

There is no doubt about the fans and support for the game in our country. There are record attendees in Indian stadiums during football matches, Events, Virtual meetups for all the major tournaments all across the world. We are a massive supporter and follower of European football. In every street here we know who Ronaldo, Messi, Maradona, Zidane and all other footballing legends are.

In recent years, with the inauguration of ISL (Indian Super League) (Huge thanks to Reliance Foundation, Hero and Nita Ambani) Football has uplifted by a good margin in India, but still there is a lot of work to be done. We still lack Government involvement, private sector involvement, Media Coverage and a lot of other initiatives for the good of the game. The mainstream publicity, support, sponsorship, Cricket gets here, Football is nowhere in the league. Here we have politicians who push icons like Sunil Chhetri for a mere stage photo that is the standards we get to see here. (BTW Sunil Chhetri is the 3rd highest active goal scorer worldwide)

It is a collective failure from the fans and from government that despite having such a craze for the game in this country, we were not able to capatize on it. Unfortunately we are fans of European football and not Indian football at all. We know who is Manchester United’s Coach and Captain but not of Indian clubs and national team.

AIFF Ban

AIFF also has been accused of corruption and influence from the party in government. It resulted that recently FIFA banned AIFF which didn’t allowed any Indian football team to compete or qualify for any FIFA tournament. We almost lost the hosting rights for U-17 FIFA Women WC. Fortunately Government intervened in this, Approached Supreme Court, changed the AIFF structure and finally the ban was lifted. It’s 2022 and we still are facing bans, reason being nothing but corruption.

It is good knowing, there is Women ISL, Women I-League, Youth ISL and much more being set up. But still we have a long way to go.

One day, we will definitely bring it home.