There’s an old football saying that would still apply in today’s highly-altered approach to the game. “When you need to take away a draw, you play for a win.”
On Monday, the Indian team discarded that simple truism when they needed to employ it the most. To many newbie fans of the Indian football team, and many surprising older, seasoned converts of football’s ‘new dawn’, it would always remain that injury-time penalty – and the farewell tears of a coach whose posturing was always bigger than his stature – that crashed India’s Asian Cup dream. But in reality, India’s self-goals had begun a long time before kick-off against Bahrain.
Hopefully now, the unreasonable hype, the smokescreen of a high Fifa ranking, the bright future, all the conniving spiel will abate. Because knockout by a whisker at a rare Asian Cup appearance still doesn’t change the fact that Indian football faces a bleak future.
Stephen Constantine’s second appointment as Indian coach was nothing short of regressive. The federation that had just begun seeing some sort of balance and shape with the senior team under Bob Houghton and Wim Koevermans, strangely okayed his second coming. Ostensibly at the strange insistence of the then technical committee. The self-serving manner of the appointment only highlighted the morass that was rapidly setting in the Indian game and a complicit administration just sat by and watched. It was symptomatic of the larger problems brewing in Indian football.
But this is not about Constantine alone. With the brutal, institutionalized demolition of the India’s traditional club structure and subsequently, the I-League, to facilitate the takeover of a TV-based football show that will be anointed our premier football tournament next year onwards, the country’s football faces problems of a larger, alarming nature.
To be fair to him, Constantine, like Koevermans before him, did not shy away from pointing it out – often drawing censure from the All India Football Federation who stopped running the game in India and became watchdogs of their marketing partners, IMG-Reliance, and the woefully lightweight ISL.
It is no secret that the ISL continues to be astonishingly short on examination and challenge for the players. With these poor standards, if it continues to be the chief supplier to the national team, Indian football is in for a rough ride.
With almost the entire squad coming from the ISL, the magnitude of the coach’s headaches came to the fore at the team’s departure in December when a seasoned member of the coaching staff hinted at the nature of the problem. “You need three ISL games to equal the intensity of one international game. In the days of the I-League, the push in a single game was good enough to replicate in the national team,” he said.
That’s too many games, implying too less of a challenge and with players either benched or played out of position, it was always going to be uphill. An ill-equipped team clearly punched above its weight at the Asian Cup, but if we, as lovers of Indian football, were seeking an escape via an improbable qualification, we were only conning ourselves and typically, being disloyal to the real story.
SC cannot shy away from responsibility either. He did unnecessary marketing of Ranking. India followed a very long route for WC and AFC Asian Cup qualification - played First Round & Play-Off Round which gave us 4 matches extra. As Qualifiers carry more FIFA points, this helped in Ranking boost. I have never heard any country celebrating their Rankings-nobody does. It means very little.
You improve in Football by playing more. You will learn in playing tough opponents. This is not any Rocket Science. We crumbled under pressure against Maldives few months ago in SAFF Finals under SC.
This suggestion that we should not play any International Friendlies because Ranking might fall down (Real reason not to disturb ISL) coupled with playing against oldies in circus is what gave this pathetic display against Bahrain !!!!
More in Marketing a hollow product, less in actual work and substance.
Playing daily does decrease the intensity of the isl games. But old players in Isl are playing far better than young Indians. Coro, Lanza, Ahmed, ogbache, Marcelo etc are 30,33+
Borja is playing la liga at 38. If you are fit then age doesn't matter. BTW FC Goa oldies under Zico were horrible to watch
How many years of the deal is left between AIFF and imgr?
It is not about 1 or 2 individuals. If two teams are playing at the same intensity (low), you will not feel the difference. There is a reason why so many ISL teams lost in Super Cup against I-league clubs !!!
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Indian football’s problems deeper than Bahrain loss
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There’s an old football saying that would still apply in today’s highly-altered approach to the game. “When you need to take away a draw, you play for a win.”
On Monday, the Indian team discarded that simple truism when they needed to employ it the most. To many newbie fans of the Indian football team, and many surprising older, seasoned converts of football’s ‘new dawn’, it would always remain that injury-time penalty – and the farewell tears of a coach whose posturing was always bigger than his stature – that crashed India’s Asian Cup dream. But in reality, India’s self-goals had begun a long time before kick-off against Bahrain.
Hopefully now, the unreasonable hype, the smokescreen of a high Fifa ranking, the bright future, all the conniving spiel will abate. Because knockout by a whisker at a rare Asian Cup appearance still doesn’t change the fact that Indian football faces a bleak future.
Stephen Constantine’s second appointment as Indian coach was nothing short of regressive. The federation that had just begun seeing some sort of balance and shape with the senior team under Bob Houghton and Wim Koevermans, strangely okayed his second coming. Ostensibly at the strange insistence of the then technical committee. The self-serving manner of the appointment only highlighted the morass that was rapidly setting in the Indian game and a complicit administration just sat by and watched. It was symptomatic of the larger problems brewing in Indian football.
But this is not about Constantine alone. With the brutal, institutionalized demolition of the India’s traditional club structure and subsequently, the I-League, to facilitate the takeover of a TV-based football show that will be anointed our premier football tournament next year onwards, the country’s football faces problems of a larger, alarming nature.
To be fair to him, Constantine, like Koevermans before him, did not shy away from pointing it out – often drawing censure from the All India Football Federation who stopped running the game in India and became watchdogs of their marketing partners, IMG-Reliance, and the woefully lightweight ISL.
It is no secret that the ISL continues to be astonishingly short on examination and challenge for the players. With these poor standards, if it continues to be the chief supplier to the national team, Indian football is in for a rough ride.
With almost the entire squad coming from the ISL, the magnitude of the coach’s headaches came to the fore at the team’s departure in December when a seasoned member of the coaching staff hinted at the nature of the problem. “You need three ISL games to equal the intensity of one international game. In the days of the I-League, the push in a single game was good enough to replicate in the national team,” he said.
That’s too many games, implying too less of a challenge and with players either benched or played out of position, it was always going to be uphill. An ill-equipped team clearly punched above its weight at the Asian Cup, but if we, as lovers of Indian football, were seeking an escape via an improbable qualification, we were only conning ourselves and typically, being disloyal to the real story.
Borja is playing la liga at 38. If you are fit then age doesn't matter. BTW FC Goa oldies under Zico were horrible to watch
How many years of the deal is left between AIFF and imgr?