India hopes for football legacy
Setting up a youth development programme would be its biggest takeaway but not the only positive
That all six venues have clubs in the top tiers of the Indian football structure should mean they won’t end up being white elephants. Add to that Chennai City refurbishing a stadium in Coimbatore, Gokulam FC doing that in Kozhikode, Neroca FC getting government help to improve facilities in Imphal, and the improved infrastructure in four cities which have ISL teams but are not hosting the World Cup. It would still be far from ideal but India would have more places to play football.
The best way to keep governments at the state and centre interested is by pitching for another showpiece. India has done that. “If the World Cup ends without major hitches and the average attendance is around 20,000 (more than double of Chile in 2015), who knows, Fifa might even award an U-20 World Cup soon,” said Prabhakaran. That India managed to fill all six national sponsors’ slots too should keep Fifa happy.
INCREASED PARTICIPATION
The buzz around the World Cup too has been such that it seems cool to be an U-17 footballer. “People will tell you who Amarjit Singh Kiyam’s parents are though they may not know as much about, say, senior India goalie Gurpreet Singh,” said Prabhakaran. This should translate into greater encouragement and increased participation, he said.
“When a society emphasises something, by custom or mandate, results will follow….,” former world chess champion Garry Kasparov has said in his new book ‘Deep Thinking’.
If Kasparov is right in this context, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) won’t be accused of day-dreaming. “We would like to qualify for the under-17 and under-20 World Cups. The immediate target though is the Asian under-19 qualifiers in November. The U-17 team beat the U-19 team in a friendly so, we could take some of these players,” said Kushal Das, the AIFF general secretary.
‘HUNGRY FOR MORE’
This World Cup should also make the India players hungrier, said Roy Millar, the former director of coaching in Northern Ireland. Here for a Fifa event in 2016, Millar had said that having played a World Cup, the boys would dare to dream of qualifying for the Asian and world agegroup meets and eventually the Asian Cup finals.
But for that to happen, India would have to broadbase its youth development programme. If India can do that, it would be this World Cup’s biggest takeaway. That a number of players in this squad were perhaps added because they did well in one game against the national probables highlights the absence of a system. In Northern Ireland we don’t miss any players, in India you probably get them by chance, Millar had said.