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While the present health of the sport is all too well known, in this article we will be taking a look at the history and the recent past of Indian football when we had heartening results.
It all starts with the Durand Cup - the third oldest football tournament in the world.
It started all the way back in 1888 by Sir Mortimer Durand in the hilly town of Shimla. While other sports like cricket still remained a “gentleman’s game”, football however was readily accepted by many, especially in states such as Goa and Bengal, a craze which continues to flourish even now and will certainly do so in the future.
The recently concluded 120th Durand Cup was won by Churchill Brothers with a 1-0 victory over Mahindra United. The start of Indian football was dominated by British teams and army regiments for obvious reasons so it isn’t surprising that the next most significant landmark came after a considerable passage of time in 1911.
Mohun Bagan caused a stir by becoming the first Indian team to lift the IFA Shield, a tournament previously won only by British teams based in India. It defeated the Eastern Yorkshire Regiment 2-1 in the final of the tournament in a victory that is still regarded by many as the greatest by an Indian team before Independence.
Gradually a number of clubs and tournaments proliferated all over the country leading to the formation of the All India Football Federation in 1937. The AIFF got affiliated to the world body FIFA in 1948 and was one of the founder members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 1954.
The 1950’s up to the early 60’s is widely regarded as the golden era of football in India. India made its Olympic debut in football at the 1948 London Games, but lost 2-1 to France in the first match. In the 1956 Melbourne Olympics India became the first Asian nation to reach the semifinals of an Olympic football event defeating Australia 4-2 in the quarterfinal. The hallmark of the win was the hat trick by centre forward Neville D'Souza who became the first Asian to achieve the feat in the Olympics.
India qualified for the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil when all of their opponents withdrew from qualification. However India refused to participate in the event as FIFA required all the players to wear football boots whereas the Indian players were used to playing barefoot. Little did they know how severe a missed opportunity it would be.
The Asian Games is where India had most of its major successes, winning the gold medal in 1951 and 1962, while reaching the semi finals in the next two subsequent tournaments. In 1964, India lost out to Israel in the final of the AFC Asian cup. It would be one of their last major achievements for many years to come.
The national team’s recent major victories include the LG Cup won in Vietnam, under then-coach Stephen Constantine and the Nehru Cup, this year under the leadership of current coach Bob Houghton, when they defeated a much higher ranked Syria 1-0.
Qualifying for the World Cup however seems to be elusive after a 4-1 away loss and a 2-2 home draw against Lebanon meant that the World Cup target has moved back four years to 2014.
For a nation as gigantic as ours, our achievements have been relatively modest . Only the South Asian Federations Cup is a trophy that we have consistently won and it includes minnows such as Maldives (population of around 40,000), Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
A big positive we can take is the appointment of Bob Houghton as national coach since he is a coach with very good credentials. They include leading a Swedish top flight side Malmö FF to the European Cup finals in 1979 against all odds although they lost in a narrow 1-0 match to Nottingham Forest. He’s also managed clubs like Al Ittihad, Uzbekistan national team and most recently the Chinese National team (1997-2000).
The year of 1996 was probably the biggest year for Indian domestic football. After a delegation from FIFA visited India to study the then existing condition of the sport, a national league (NFL) was formed in accordance to their recommendations.
Thus the NFL became the most high profile football league in India, slowly eating away the importance of domestic leagues and bringing together the best of the country’s talent in one playing field .Only the Kolkata League and the Goan league remain popular.
Before the start of the NFL, Indian clubs used to participate in different tournaments of short duration, not lasting more than a month. There were more than 10 tournaments in which the major clubs used to take part in the years before the start of the NFL.
The game took up a more bureaucratic nature and none were happier than the players whose salaries doubled and tripled! Big companies were interested in sponsoring domestic football. But everything was not as rosy as it first seemed.
Most major clubs in the NFL were based in the states of Bengal and Goa, which are the hubs that propagate football in India. Kerala and Maharashtra are next on the list of importance and influence.
Youth development was never a priority for most major clubs that preferred bidding big for an established Indian or foreign player rather than adding a few juniors in their squads. With very few U-19 tournaments, clubs couldn’t maintain a junior team throughout the year.
Only last year they added a third division to the NFL, thus bringing more clubs to the national venture. The I-League has been formed in order to better the existing standard of the game and is considered a step up from the NFL. Being the first professional league, it certainly seems to be a positive step taken by the much criticized AIFF.
The only concerns are the cup tournaments which have steadily dwindled in popularity ever since the advent of a national football league.
The AIFF has certainly aimed to leave no stone unturned and launch the league with much splendour. There have been talk of stars such as Shahrukh Khan or John Abraham being present during the opening ceremony.
All this being said, the I-League seems much too similar to the existing NFL. The recent sudden involvement of many foreign clubs in youth development programs seems to be a welcome relief.
But is this ‘professional’ league merely a cosmetic change? We’ll need to wait and see…




source:goal.com