India And Football- Are They Apart?

India- The country recognized in all fields throughout the world. Education, sports, culture, art, and whatnot. There’s nothing we believe our country is not good at. And it’s not just about winning, the participation matters too. There’s nothing our country doesn’t put its hands into. There’s no sports India does not participate in except one. FIFA World Cup. Yes, India has not participated in the FIFA World Cup for years.
As the story told by many football historians or pandits, India withdrew from the FIFA World Cup because FIFA imposed a rule to ban players from playing barefoot. However, according to the then captain of India, this story was not true. Since then, people are trying to find out the various reasons why India participates in all sports except Football.
In India, the majority of the population is crazy for cricket, some of them won’t even know their national sport, and the others won’t even be interested in watching football matches. The condition of all sports apart from cricket is the same when we consider fan support. The attendance to these games is hardly more than 10000 and believe it or not, but it makes a huge difference if you have a large number of people supporting you. This is because most of the people of our country are the frog in a well and think that cricket is the only sport and even compare cricketers to God. Also, India lacks infrastructure for football. It is astonishing that a few of the biggest clubs in India don't have proper training and medical facilities. There are less than 10 stadiums which meet international standards and this is very less considering the size of our country.
The fact that the All India Football Federation has partly failed in the promotion of football is also one of the reasons. It is not promoted as much as cricket. The media hardly covers the football matches, television broadcast quality is also very poor, so overall I-league was never a big hit. But now times are changing. There is new hope for football. A lot of young people have started following football in the past few years. Even this season of I-league was different than others, which shows that India is growing in the field of Football. Sooner or later, India will participate in the FIFA World Cup and we cannot wait for that day to come.

By: Surbhi Singh

Content: https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-India-have-a-football-World-Cup-team