Soccer World Cup & India..Waka, waka this time for India!!

When today I sat down to write this blog the last whistle of Soccer World Cup 2010 had already been blown by the referee one week back!! One more World Cup has passed by!! One more month of sensation has finished!! Football fanatic of India, specially Bengal toiled a lot in the last month to sit in front of TV in the midnight depriving themselves from their well cushioned luxury beds; debated with colleagues on tea table over their favorite teams’ wins and losses; bus, train, tram, car, cab, office, school, auto regardless of the vehicles, regardless of their societal status people were chatting, gossiping about football; newspapers’ headlines were transformed from politics to football, our ministers, film stars all were outspaced by Kaka, Messi, Ronaldo, Diego, Eniesta, Via, et. al. Spain, who had won the EURO Cup 2008, won the first time World Cup in the history of 80 yrs of Soccer World Cup. But what about India? A country with 1.2 billion of population can’t produce 11 international class footballers, India is struggling to find a place in the FIFA ranking under 150 and country like Spain with 50 million of population is the world’s best football playing country. Utter shame for us!!!But why? Who is to be blamed? Government, poor infrastructure, physical fitness, lack of professionalism, media plethora of reasons can be listed down which is the proper reason?
But I feel the biggest problem we have with is our ATTITUDE. Attitude is something which differentiates a genius from an ordinary person and we lack in that. Personally, I believe, we have already believed that football world cup is not our cup of tea and we can’t play the way other football playing countries play. Japan, such a small country, with less population, has become one of the well known football playing nation of the world and they have produced world class footballer like Honda who is the Japanese flag bearer even in classical conservative European football and here in India we have Baichung Bhutia, who has played in some 2nd division football team of Europe and we worship him as the greatest player of football in India but we forget that our ancestors got a chance to play in soccer world cup in 1950 after 2nd World War. Since that time our players used to play football bare footed and were not comfortable in shoes with spikes, so, they were disqualified to kick the ball in that world cup. We even forget that during that time we had lot many good players who were comparable even with world class players. Now, India does foreign tours to play against some 2nd divisional club teams of various countries and there also they play not to score goal and beat them but to receive less goals and accept a defeat with pride with a consolation that they played hard but could not succeed. No wonder, we are at 132nd position! My point is not any comparison between Baichung and Honda, but my point of discussion is attitude. I guess attitude of our players, our football association and attitude of all the associates of football is not in place. Attitude is something which determines our altitude. If we under estimate our potential, who will value us!! Nobody!! And that is what is happening with India. Once in the year of 1996 we got ranking of 94, ironically that is the best ranking we have ever had in the FIFA ranking from when it has started to rank the football playing nations. After that in 2006, we got our ever lowest rating of 165!!!Shame!! Shame!! When other Asian countries like Japan, Korea, Iran, even China etc. has improved once they got their highest FIFA ranking ever, India degraded like anything and doing nothing productive which can make sure about their Soccer world Cup debut even after 20 years. This is what I call ‘the attitude problem’. We have legacy of procrastination, we are complacent with our little achievements, we are happy if we get a chance to play in some 2nd division club of Europe. Actually neither we dream big, nor our footballers. When we needed to improve a lot by doing hard work and proper nourishment of the football team in 1996, and took a vision of playing in world cup by 2018 or say by 2022, we ignored to do so. Why? Because of our myopia, we all ran after Cricket, sponsors ran after Cricket as it is always more profitable for them in country like India. We felt and still feel worthwhile to encourage our kids to play cricket than to play football, our media felt that Cricket news are more favorable and lucrative over football news and they started rat race in their media businesses. If we analyze the lives of great footballers, we will see one common thing in most of their lives that is poverty. Then how did they do it? Nothing!! In spite of their poverty, their respective governments and clubs took care of those rare talents and nurtured them and gifted them to their national teams. Talent is one thing which has never been in shortage in India say it education, say it football, say it cricket, say it anything you can imagine. We, Indians are always talented in every field, even Branco, one of the key member of Brazil football team, winner of Soccer world Cup, 1994, has already admitted that players are talented but physically unfit due to proper diet, their physical stamina is weaker compared to other nations due to lack of practice. Branco, who has come for a TV football reality show in Kolkata, is amazed after seeing the infrastructure of football stadium in Saltlake and he told the media that many front runner football playing countries do not have this much facilities and modern infrastructure that Saltlake stadium has. So this proves that lack of infrastructure is not the real issue, real issue is our attitude and here comes the responsibility of respective government and football clubs. If we analyze our football clubs, we will see that our football clubs are spending lakhs and even crores of rupees to hire a 3rd graded foreign footballer who are not getting chance to play football anywhere in the world and giving less opportunity and money to our own footballers who are even more talented than those 3rd graded foreigners just to win few national tournaments; even time and again we see that they are not allowing players from their teams to represent in international match for the national team and play for the pride of the country. By doing so we are sending our sub- standard football team, we are creating clear differentiation between foreign players and our players by paying less to our talented players than foreigners which is enough reason to demotivate players and the upcoming generation. They are not showing interest to play football. No wonder, we are at 132nd position in FIFA ranking list!! As sponsors are less interested to spend money on football teams, so footballers are less paid as compared to our cricketers. As I wrote already that footballers mainly come from poor families, so money is one and perhaps the biggest motivation for them to play football. Here comes the responsibility of clubs, government, IFA, sponsors and all associates of football including media. Clubs need to identify the proper talent and give them payment according to their potential, clubs should show less interest to such 3rd graded foreign footballers and give our own footballers more opportunity, nurture their talent under an efficient coach who can channelize them in a right manner and guide them in a right direction; government should intervene to nurture our footballers by allocating proper fund, IFA should organize or arrange international tournament for national team at regular intervals and give them chance to play against world’s best football playing nations or clubs, not with sub standard 2nd division or 3rd division European clubs, players should develop their attitude positively before playing against such teams, because they need to understand that fighting is not enough but winning is the only way to be remembered forever. But all these things are easy to say but difficult to do and obviously not impossible to do, for this, proper planning and strategy is needed to execute it. From now on IFA should take up a vision that 15 years down the line India would play in Soccer World Cup, to make the dream turn into a reality, they should start to identify the talents from now onwards aged between 7 to 10 years and they would be trained and nurtured by the world class coaches with proper financial and societal infrastructure and they would be exposed to international standard tournaments regularly and play against international class players which will give them both stamina and confidence to face world cup playing countries. If it is properly planned, done, monitored and maintained sustainably then it would not be a difficult task to find out not 11 but atleast 110 international class footballers who can rule the world and can be equally contender of national football jersey. Just we need to correct our attitude towards football. And then we also will be able to sing Waka, Waka, this time for India!!!