When it rains, it pours, is an English idiom, and that perhaps best explains the current difficult times in Indian football. First was the news of the allegations against AIFF President Kalyan Chaubey on corruption charges, then later came the sacking of the senior executive member of the Federation, Deepak Sharma, on assault charges, and in between on the field, the Indian team touched a new low in performance by losing to lowly Afghanistan in a 2026 World Cup qualifier! Do we need anything more to present the plight of this once-popular sport in the country? Well, talk of popularity. To be sure, football can never be short of followers, but the sadness is to juxtapose this with the shoddy reflection of the sport in the country! Just when it seemed that things could not get any worse came the FIFA ranking, which showed India had tumbled several rungs to 121, its worst ranking in recent times. It was 129 seven years ago, though the worst has been 173 in 2015. The latest embarrassment comes after the Afghanistan reverse in Guwahati, a country that is 41 rungs below India.
Whither Indian football? This must be the question pounding the minds of football lovers, particularly old-timers who had seen or heard of the great moments that this country had in this sport. Indeed, the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, when India made it to the semi-finals, the Asian Games........