![\"Boys](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/2024-10-31T072925Z_1438279455_RC2DVAAF7O4V_RTRMADP_3_INDIA-POLLUTION-1753362102.jpg\")
Boys play football on a lawn on a smoggy morning in New Delhi, India [Anushree Fadnavis\/Reuters]<\/p>\nFormer FIFA President Sepp Blatter once called India a \u201csleeping giant\u201d of football, but the sport is mired in a new crisis in the country, and faces problems from the top down to the grassroots.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s national team are without a coach, and the Indian Super League (ISL) \u2013 India\u2019s top competition \u2013 is in danger of collapsing over a dispute between the federation and its commercial partner.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody in the Indian football ecosystem is worried, hurt, scared about the uncertainty we are faced with,\u201d Sunil Chhetri, the celebrated veteran striker, wrote on X about the fate of the ISL.<\/p>\n
The former national skipper unwittingly summed up one of the issues facing Indian football when he came out of international retirement in March, aged 40.<\/p>\n
The striker has 95 goals for his country and is only behind Cristiano Ronaldo (138), Lionel Messi (112) and Ali Daei (108) in the all-time international scoring charts.<\/p>\n
His best days are well behind him, but with no younger replacements coming through, he returned to the national side.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s men are 133rd in the FIFA rankings \u2013 their lowest placing in nearly a decade \u2013 and have won just one of their last 16 matches.<\/p>\n
They have never reached the World Cup, and Spaniard Manolo Marquez stepped down this month as head coach after just one year and one win in eight games.<\/p>\n
His last act was to oversee a 1-0 defeat in Asian Cup qualifying to Hong Kong, population 7.5 million to India\u2019s 1.4 billion.<\/p>\n
Boys play football on a lawn on a smoggy morning in New Delhi, India [Anushree Fadnavis\/Reuters]<\/p>\n
The ISL is usually played between September and April.<\/p>\n
But a rights agreement between the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL), the company that runs the ISL, ends on December 8 and is yet to be renewed.<\/p>\n
The league is now paralysed in advance of the new campaign, and the uncertainty has affected more than 5,000 players, coaches, staff and others.<\/p>\n
National football team director and former captain Subrata Paul is confident the sport in India \u2013 a country obsessed with cricket \u2013 will come out stronger.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndian football, like any growing ecosystem, will face its share of challenges and transitions,\u201d Paul, regarded as one of India\u2019s best-ever goalkeepers, told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see this as a time to pause, reflect and refocus. Yes, the recent results and the uncertainty around the ISL are difficult for all of us who love the game, but I see a silver lining as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to strengthen our foundation by investing in youth development, infrastructure and quality coaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
The franchise-based ISL started in 2014 as a league that brought global stars, including Italy\u2019s Alessandro Del Piero, to India, and aimed to promote the game in a new avatar.<\/p>\n
Bur rather than boom, the ISL has seen dwindling TV ratings and declining sponsor interest.<\/p>\n
Football\u2019s global bosses have long been eager to tap India\u2019s potential, as the world\u2019s most populous country.<\/p>\n
Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager and now FIFA\u2019s chief of global football development, visited in 2023 to inaugurate an academy.<\/p>\n
Last month, AIFF President Kalyan Chaubey, who is also a politician with the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, met Wenger, who has backed India\u2019s football development, particularly at the grassroots level.<\/p>\n
Chaubey said Wenger believes starting football at 13 years of age, as is the norm in India, is too late. Players should start by eight, he said.<\/p>\n
While India has never reached the World Cup and again will be absent in North America next year, there has been modest success in the distant past.<\/p>\n
India qualified for the Olympics four times between 1948 and 1960. At the 1956 Melbourne Games, India came fourth after losing the bronze-medal match to Bulgaria.<\/p>\n
Since Blatter\u2019s \u201csleeping giant\u201d characterisation in 2007, India has remained in a deep slumber.<\/p>\n
Football is a distant third in popularity in India after cricket and hockey, with the eastern city of Kolkata and the southern state of Kerala hotspots for the sport.<\/p>\n
Compounding football\u2019s struggles in India, there has long been mismanagement by Indian football chiefs, said veteran sport journalist Jaydeep Basu.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that the team, which was ranked 99 in September 2023, has come down to 133 basically shows poor management,\u201d Basu told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a caucus working in the AIFF of two or three people who are running the show for their own benefit,\u201d added Basu, who recently authored a book titled, Who Stole My Football?<\/p>\n
AFP has contacted the AIFF for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter once called India a \u201csleeping giant\u201d of football, but the sport is mired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[1724,64,63,596,1209,44,588,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-18650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-india","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sport","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}