Despite passionate football culture and a population of 1.4 billion, India remains absent from the World Cup stage — held back by poor governance, a broken grassroots system, and a federation that has more ambition on paper than results on the pitch.
Walk through Kerala or Kolkata during a World Cup and you’d swear football was India’s national religion. Giant Messi and Ronaldo cutouts line the roads. Fans stay up till 3am for group stage matches. Indian journalists fill the press box in host cities — covering a tournament their country has no part in.
The paradox is almost painful.
India, a nation of 1.4 billion, sits 136th in the FIFA rankings — below Curaçao, the smallest country ever to reach the World Cup. And the latest edition is no different: no Blue Tigers, just fans cheering for everyone else.
So what went wrong?
Former captain Baichung Bhutia puts it bluntly — talent isn’t the issue. The ecosystem is. India has no serious grassroots programme, no long-term vision, and a federation, the AIFF, that has spent recent years generating more headlines for chaos than football.
The Indian Super League — once a flashy, Bollywood-backed attempt to supercharge the sport — just completed a curtailed season after the AIFF failed to attract a single commercial partner. The federation’s Vision 2047, which promised to bring 35 million children into the game, reads increasingly like a forgotten election manifesto.
Veteran striker Shyam Thapa, 78, adds another layer: middle-class parents are steering kids toward cricket, chasing IPL contracts and the money that comes with them. Until football can offer comparable financial security, it will keep losing the war for talent at the grassroots.
There are glimmers of hope. A policy push to allow overseas Indians — currently playing for Qatar, Australia, New Zealand and Congo at this very World Cup — to represent India without renouncing foreign passports could be a genuine game-changer. Australia-born Ryan Williams has already shown what that pipeline could look like.
But for now, India watches. Again.
If Curaçao can make the World Cup, the question isn’t whether India ever will — it’s why it’s taking this long to figure out how.
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