How India refusing to participate in 1950 FIFA World Cup is still haunting football fans in the country?

on

Let me ask you a simple question who is at the top of current Champions league, Premier League and Serie A tournament ?

Many would straightway name a club but as an Indian football fan you feel dejected as people are hardly taking about Indian players who are representing our country in one of the most popular games in the world.

UEFA Champions league

If you want to check the Intelligent quotient of people who claim they love Indian football will hardly remember the name of 2-3 players including Sunil Chhetri who is currently representing Blue tigers.

 

What surprises me that most of the football fans who claim they love Indian football don’t even know about the history of the game.

But the question we need to ask ourselves is Fans responsible for all this or it has got to do with federation who have completely failed to embrace the game and the recent performances by Indian national side where they struggled to beat Sri Lanka which is a much lower ranked team and playing draw against Bangladesh clearly indicates that all is not well in Indian football.

Most Successful Teams in FIFA World Cup History | Most World Cup Winners in Football History

If your team is not winning against lower ranked opponent, even fans will not drive you because visiting at the stadium and cheering for your country and witnessing pathetic performance of your players on the field will leave you dejected and disappointed nothing else if this pattern is continuing in the long run.

There are several issues which has crippled Indian football be it- Federation, Grassroot level scouting programme, Lack of matches at domestic level.

But the strange thing is that we were a pretty good side back in 50s and even got an opportunity to play FIFA World Cup but we simply blew that chance due to reasons shared in various media outlets.

First_Indian_Professional_Football_Club

Few experts stated in the past –it was due to lack of footwear, other had an opinion India got an opportunity to play in FIFA World Cup after several top football playing nation at that time denied to participate as it was the first marquee event post Second World War where nations went through hell, financial situations of many country bombarded which prompted many countries to withdrew their names also International sanctions was also imposed at that point of time and due to this-Scotland, France, and Czechoslovakia pulled out and the world cup which was held in Brazil had only 13 teams and after observing that there was no single team from Asia, host Brazil Football Federation got in touch with All India Football Federation and offered to take care of all the expense of Indian player during that trip.

What happened immediately will shock you if reports from different media outlets are to believed, India never confirmed nor withdrew their names and when the tournament started Blue Tigers weren’t there.

This is sad as an Indian football fan, because the same country did wonders in 1948 Olympics put up a commendable performance and most of the players in that marquee event played barefoot. 

For emerging nation like India back then, missing an opportunity of not playing FIFA World Cup in 1950 to not qualifying for any world cups thereafter till date haunts Indian football fans in a big way.

The kind of current ecosystem Indian Football have at the moment; it will be ideally impossible for India to play next FIFA World Cup in coming years.

The pain in the hearts of Indian football fans continues and don’t know when we will see Indian players representing our country in top sporting events of the world.

Also Read:  How we can upscale the quality of Indian football ecosystem ?

Related posts:

Indian Football newsWe are confident of doing well in Qatar, reveals Indian midfielder Anirudh Thapa “Sunil Chhetri is the best player I have played with”- Lallianzuala Chhangte Sunil ChhetriIndian Football team begins training in Doha after all players test negative for COVID-19 Why Rajasthan United Football Club only fielded 9 players in their last match of I-League?