The chief coach of the Indian football team, Manolo Marquez has persuaded the 40-year-old Sunil Chhetri to come out of international retirement and once again don the nation’s jersey in matches against India’s rivals. While Manolo may have temporarily filled the big gap in the front line of the team, the move has exposed a glaring lacuna in Indian football.
The recall of Chhetri has raised an important question: Why does a country of 1.4 billion people have no other football player who can score goals? His departure seemed to have plunged Indian football into complete darkness.
Dismal picture
In the last few contests, Indian football has presented a dismal picture. Out of 11 matches that the team played, it won not a single match. Only 4 goals were scored by India and 15 goals were scored against India. Then there was the fracas involving chief coach Igor Stimac who was sacked, then went to court to claim damages and also spilled the beans about the mismanagement within Indian football.
In the last few contests, Sunil himself was struggling. He rightly decided that it is time to hang up his boots and make way for the next generation. But the problem arose when the next generation failed to step up and fill the gap.
A vicious circle
It is the result of a vicious circle. Club coaches of the Indian Super League (ISL) teams prioritise foreign strikers because Indian players are not good enough. But if they are not given adequate exposure, they will never be able to raise their game.
This is a problem that the All India Football Federation (AIFF), which controls the game in India, needs to address immediately. The ISL tournament was conceptualised to bring about a big improvement in Indian football by bringing in foreign players to play alongside the Indian players. It was hoped that the Indians would look and learn from their foreign counterparts.
However, that has not happened. Indian players have shown no improvement. So perhaps it is time for the AIFF to stop relying on foreign players to take part on behalf of local club teams in India. Our country used to do much better when foreign players were not playing in Indian tournaments.
Small countries rank above India
At present, India is ranked 126th in the world by FIFA. Much smaller countries are ranked above us. Even war-torn Palestine is ranked above India. The Indian football administrators must admit that the ongoing ISL is not producing talent and modify it to get better results. As the first step, a system of promotion and relegation should be introduced. Every country has that system except India.
Coach Manolo Marquez explained the rationale behind his decision to bring back Chhetri in these words: “At this moment he is the best Indian striker. None of the juniors can match him. In my four games with the Indian team, we scored just two goals. We need more goals and I feel Sunil is the best man for the job right now.”
Not a proper solution
But surely even the coach and everyone else concerned with Indian football realise that this is a temporary measure that will not solve the problem. More drastic steps are required to build up Indian football from the grassroots level. As one expert commented, bringing back Sunil Chhetri at this stage is like putting ointment on a fractured limb. What is needed is an X-ray to understand the damage, followed by surgery if required, to heal the injury and rectify the problem.
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