They just need a Bollywood movie to promote football

I am a teen from india, and the love for the sport is developing at the rate it is very visible to me. I remember when I was younger there were no groups of children playing football, now everywhere I see someone playing the sport or having a club to die for. Sadly those clubs are never Indian and professional football has a long way to go in this country, but it is better than it has ever been.

As an Indian, lack of infrastructure and investment in the grassroot level are the primary causes behind this. The interest and passion are definitely there.

Michael Chopra tried to play for India too but couldn't because of dual citizenship and this is a player that played in the English Premier League

The thing with Syed Abdul Rahim was that players said he was like a friend to them, I can go on and on about him (since I've spent way too long researching him), but will give one instance that I read about: Before the 1962 Asian Games final, our players couldn't sleep so decided to meet in the hotel lobby late at night. What they didn't know, however, was that Syed Abdul Rahim was on the stairs smoking a cigarette. Rather than berating his players on being late, he told them to come take a walk with him. He knew his health was deteriorating and this would be one of, if not his last tournament, and told them "I want one gift from you all, a gold medal tomorrow". The next day, we went on to win the trophy. Even before the final, we had criticized the hosts for not allowing certain countries to attend, so the host fans were booing us. So Rahim made the decision to ditch the offside trap since players likely wouldn't hear the referee's whistle. Furthermore, our best defender in history, Jarnail Singh, had picked up a head injury in the previous match so couldn't head the ball. However, in his college days Jarnail had played at striker, so as a psychological advantage, and due to being a massive physical presence, Syed Abdul Rahim played him up top. Who scored the winning goal in that final? Jarnail Singh.

The problem here is the lack of investment in football compared to cricket. My generation is the first Indian generation where football is also liked all over the country. In my dad’s generation most Indians bar a few states like goa West Bengal and Kerala didn’t really care much for football. India has done amazingly with grassroots in cricket. They have the players to field multiple national teams all capable of competing for the top. Such investment is needed into the grassroots for football as well 😊

I'm from Karnataka. Football is big in India. There's just one problem, the society's elites play football here at a professional level while the common man is hated for playing football in the state.

My dad and grandpa watched India defeat Australia 4-2 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the 1956 Games and most of the Indian side played barefoot. India also toured Australia before and after WWII and played friendlies against the Socceroos & other state sides.

Thank you @zealand , for putting it out there . As as Indian fan , I sincerely hope AIFF gets things in order. Love your content

Great video. Indian football definitely is lacking behind from other asian nations but there is some hope at least for the future. Developments in domestic leagues and identifying talent recently have been great and I wouldn't surprised if India can one day turn their fortunes around

I'm managing India on fm23 just to have hindi as one of my languages. (Don't ask). I have indian league loaded but all my young players are coming through in the USA. I'm having to convince them to play for me. Syed hernandez-fernandez is my best player BTW.😂

India had its first football league in 1898 as Calcutta Football League which started just 10 years after the English League. But it was contested only by teams from Kolkata and surrounding areas mostly by British regiments with the first inclusion of Indian 'native' clubs in 1914. It also had a 2nd Division by 1905. Durand Cup is the oldest existing Asian football competition but there's another tournament, the IFA Shield which is the 2nd oldest in Asia (started 1893) which has been won by the likes of Peñarol 1985 defeating Shakhtar Donetsk in final, and in 2005 Bayern München B. It was Mohammad Salim first who got signed by a European club (Celtic FC) 1936 and later on Indian captain Talimeren Ao got an offer from Arsenal but rejected it as he was pursuing medical studies in the University of Calcutta alongside playing for Mohun Bagan.

I'm usually not a big fan of KZfaqrs / KZfaq videos that just consist of the KZfaqr reading someone else's writing, but this is actually a very well-done synthesis of history and modern sources about a question I would never have had a real answer for. This really is Z at his best.

Great video. And I love how he says he'll be in Taunton on the 25th "a few day after this video comes out" it was 1pm in England on the 25th lol

I actually tried to become a scout of the Indian Federation since I saw so much potential there and decided to email them with a database I made with young talents with Indian acenstry and see if they wanted to work with me. The database had almost 50 U21 players in pretty competitive team on all continents and I didn't even search that thoroughly. The country should be much higher in the rankings but as Zealand says, the current setup just make it impossible to progress.

tbf, india is starting to grow especially in the regions where football is wayyy more dominant than other sports, for example my home state of kerala, ive been playing football in the streets or turfs since the age of 3 and football culture in kochi is huge af, the team from kochi called Kerala Blasters which plays in the ISL (indian Super League) has one of the biggest fanbases in ASIA, and there are many academies in kochi (one of em which i go to) and even ones from the likes of A.C. Milan.

It's interesting though because Australia also has trouble setting up a national league but we still have had constant success making it to every World Cup since 2006 which is when the A-League was set up. And Australia by all means is not a big spending on Football country but the other codes are where Australia has a lot more focus, Rugby League, AFL(Or basically the Australian variant of Gaelic Football) are more popular in Australia and bring in more money as Rugby League about 8 teams out of 11 or 12 are based in New South Wales which also has the most A-League teams. We actually have zero teams in the Northern Territory and Western Australia and South Australia have only small presence in our National sports leagues with I think 2 AFL teams and South Australia also has 2 AFL Teams and Tasmania also doesn't have much of a presence in sport.

Great video! Would you be interested in doing an UEFA youth league video since the final was yesterday?

Love your videos. You got so much passion for this. Keep it up

Dude, thank you SO much for this video, it's been a huge question I've had for yeeeeeeeeeeears. Appreciate you

As an Indian football fan, this is a well researched and very good video. Hopefully things will work out better for Indian football in the future.

Indian football has the oldest asian derby. They have HISTORY.

Long time subscriber from India. Great video as always. Loved the Indian fusion music BGM

India sucks at some other really important things too 😂. Football is quite low on priority.

The main reason India don’t play football, is because every time they win a corner, they build a shop.

Solid video Z.

I am literally shocked that u covered that topic so perfectly❤... But after all of this now the AIFF doing some fabulous job and I hope it will develop the game in our country

Gotta love these history videos, thanks Z

I am from West Bangal, India. Here Both football and cricket is similarly popular. I grew up playing both the sports. Bengal is one of the best state for footballers. Most of the National leagues have been won by clubs of Kolkata. But the thing is on a national level there's hardly any investment coming up in football, where in cricket 🏏 every year Cricket board, which is private entity, is generating and investing 10-20 Billion dollars all over the country. There's absolutely no chance football can get that much amount. Only few states people watches the sports and even they are only interested in local clubs games or world up games. Very few people actually knows anything about the national team. But we are always hopeful to make it to the world cup one day

Yesterday by seeing the u-17 match between IND and RM , I felt good, yeah it was a tie of 3-3 but by seeing the history it really feels good

Damn, wish I could have been there. Had to listen to the game on Mixr, as here in the US, that's the only way I can listen to broadcasts of Weymouth's games. Weymouth just beat Taunton Town today, 3-1. As a Weymouth fan, GREAT GAME!!! Now, Weymouth needs to WIN their game against Dover on Saturday (4/29/23) in order to avoid relegation. Up the Terras!!

I read that article in The Athletic. Fantastic read.

The Indian premier League of cricket in India is fantastic entertainment. The fans are so lively and it really helps make the matches exciting. I'm sure Indian football will be very fun to watch.

I think population and geography don't have much say in this, when your country is poor. Whether we like it or not, India is 140th in GDPP. Having a middle class life is considered great/good. So it's understandable that people are banking on education rather than sports. Arts, sports, literature etc will always take a back seat in countries like these. But India is on a developing end right now and continues to do so (if the media are right). So I am hopeful that , football development will be in the brighter spectrum those days.

I started following the youtube channel of the Indian league, they are not too bad but the best players are foreigners , there is also a channel on youtube where they show the bangladesh leagues matches

Brilliant content, i think the crux of the matter has been very well explained, OCI representation is very important to improve the national team, players like Vikas Dhorasoo, Micheal Chopra and many others could have represented India

I am from West Bengal, India. My state is called "Mecca of Indian Football" as the state is filled with golden history of originating Indian Football along Kerala too. Indian Football has improved a bit over the years and much too basic demands which we pressurized on them upon a time is less now.... With incumbent cabinet taking over AIFF, they are bringing a lot of changes with which we are happy with. I know this is just the beginning, but it's awesome. ISL will be expanded to promotion-relegation phase until 16 teams are coming up, I-League-ISL top league status debate concluded with ISL being top league of the country and bringing in professionalism in L-League too(now I-League is 2nd division), MoUs are benefitting the youth teams for more exposure.... Major issue is (1) infrastructure, (2) grassroots level and support of masses. 1 and 2 is in progression stage but the mass crowd support is a question only. Hope we will be the best team in Asia one day and play World Cup soon!

India's football is expanding now,that's the greatest thing I saw after I born

love the jersey and the video bro!

If I remember correctly, Japan and South Korea don't allow dual citizenship for adults, either. I think India's problem is that it's a huge country, making any centralized effort at improving things hard. And cricket is something they are already good at.

I guess it DOES make sense that Goa is one of Indian states that likes football the most, given the whole Portuguese ancestry there... Also, in my FM20 save, after leaving the management of my hometown club (where I started the save), Punjab FC invited me to coach there. Won one Durand cup, and when I thought it was a weird name for an Indian football cup, I research it and found out it was founded by a British general of the army.

The Philippines is also in this similar situation, the difference is that Philippines never got to the point where FIFA banned them, many people prefer to invest to basketball instead of football, superstars such as Messi, Ronaldo and Pele are barely known. The Philippines only received a little awakening when they qualified to women's world cup. I think due to FIFA rankings, Younghusband has to leave Chelsea same goes to Schrock has to leave Frankfurt.

Great Video, i had a fun video idea that could branch off of this. why england can't win a world cup. Think its an interesting story from the founders involving psychology pressure etc

Great video; could you do one for Hong Kong too maybe?

Even if FIFA doesn't care. They actually should just on Marketing alone. IF they manage to make India good at Football, they will easily get an additional 100 million views at least. Indian fandom is more similar to South East Asia than Far East Asia. This means if they manage to love a sport, they will become crazy about it. Meaning India could become a huge market.

My only knowledge of Indian football is that Bengaluru have a partnership with Rangers and that David Robertson, Ex Rangers was managing there

Gutted I wasn’t able to see you at Taunton, used to play American football there

Please look up Dr T. Ao who played a major role in India's advance to the Olympics and why no other teams have come up since.

Its actually crazy considering the Indian population in the UK that India doesnt have a good national team. Tho it been sorta the same with Surinam and the Netherlands for years and that only recently changed (2/3 year ago if i am correct). Would be really helpfull if India had a similar plan.

India has seeked comfort in being average at cricket, now every other sport is suffering.

I am from India, and according to me the rise in passion for football is increasing at a very rapid rate especially among teens, all thanks to the world cup. Almost in every single ground in my vicinity, i can see kids playing football during the evenings. The popularity of European club football is surging in India. All it takes, is a little push in the form of proper infrastructure and support and football will easily oust cricket as the main sport in India, especially when today's teens become young adults. We just gotta wait some more years..

I have family in Indonesia. Footbal is 1 of the biggest sports there aswell. The biggest problem there I think is that the biggest sport talents get recruted into the army once they turn 18 years old (poor families). + rich people pay to have their children play in the big leagues and the national team. If the coach dissagrees he is fired.

Zealand is going to Taunton and they're playing against my home town, if I had known I would have arranged to go 😭

Would be interesting to see a similar one for China. I know they qualified for a World Cup but only because South Korea and Japan automatically qualified with being hosts and even with all the money they put in to their league and infrastructure etc, they still haven’t qualified for another World Cup . They might do so now with the expanded format but let’s see

Hey Zealand can you make a video on Bangladesh football?? It's a country which shares a border with India

The point that some people have been using against OCI participation in the Indian national team is that once we become dependant on OCI we will become just dependant on OCI players and the development in grassroots wont happen. In fact its the contrary, once India starts doing well in major tournaments due to overseas players, the sport will get more popular in the country and in turn more kids will start playing the sport and thus the landscape of football will improve in the country. Morocco is the prime example of how having overseas players have helped them in short term and them doing great in the World Cup will in turn help them big time in the long term.

Chhetri's work permit didn't get rejected (only) because India's world ranking is outside top 70. There's a point table for getting a governing body endorsement for a visa from the FA and a player's track record in club football is even more important especially coming from a weaker football country outside Europe. Playing only in India doesn't obviously score high enough. But playing for a certain country is a part of the issue: rule of thumb is it's easy to get the endorsement if you're a national team player from a top 50 football country or a European player and quite hard if you're not. Anyway it's rather dumb and arbitrary to have such criteria, making a player contract to the best league in the world should be endorsing enough.

This video totally reminded me of the movie 'Bend it like Beckham'. Which is for those who dont know a movie about woman football in India.

I want to commend you on your analysis of Idian football and the national set up ... Well Done! as you explained it was The British Empier who brought Football and Cricket to India. One point I wish to emphasize The World Name for The World Game is FOOTBALL ... Fact!.

I remember seeing a couple of games from the Indian league about maybe 20 years ago There were a couple of things missing from games that we have here in Scotland: 1. Grass on the pitch 2. Boots. I remember there were 2 players who were not wearing boots. They had kits, sponsors and so on. I’d always thought it was footballing law

they are getting a little bit better though recently espesscially since the vision 2047 project by AIFF

Zealand the reason India does not allow foreign nationals is because our Govt thinks it will reduce oppurtunities to Indians and the reason our constitution does not allow dual citizenship is in case there is a conflict of Intrest betwwen the two nations the person should not support the other nation

Football is really underrated in India Cricket is much more popular than football which I think is the reason

Your videos are high quality football material

Trust me, even if the entire NT was filled with diaspora players like Yan Dhanda and Danny Batth, they'd get full support. Indians love backing diaspora in any field lmao

Please make one about Thailand 🇹🇭

Great video 👍

India on the right track now, qualified for the 2023 Asian cup it is a big achievement for us , our target is Asian cup round of 16

India Lacks Grassroot Developement! OCI Card is a Stop-Gap Solution.. But hope under the new AIFF management things will change for good...🤞🤞🤞

Always appreciate the level of detail in these videos! For the near future I can't see football overtaking cricket in any meaningful way and that's not necessarily a bad thing

Great Video mate

I think the major reason for Football not being played on a large scale on a grassroots level, is that, legacy of Cricket has done too much in comparison to other sports. Football can only rise in India, if children play football whenever they think of playing a game, and interest, investment will go hand in hand onwards.

I remenber Chettri from his Sporting time. He mostly played in the B team and even there he wasnt great.

Loving the All Blacks jersey

So that's why all the part-indian players in my Football Manager saves never get called up?

There is lots of Half Indian half english in england aswell kind of like half english half irish and half english half african so if they change that overseas rules they would be allowed to play for India. Just like lots of players who cant get into the England team they can play for like Nigeria, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, USA and India could do the same.

Scotland does the opposite of India. The only players who get selected are ones born in England.

When you say a national team can be comprised of other nationals or who have born in other countries it's okay when you are a small country but not like a country like India where we take pride in the national team yes of course we won't give such importance other sports like cricket but we are slowly picking it up Playing for the country is not just for the titles it's more than that it's about pride

I have been following this topicfor a very long time, ever since my love for football started. It is a very peculiar problem with certain areas that need proper focus and improvement. There are plenty of problems that needs to be addressed to solve it and push India up the rankings. Meerly just pumping the money won't solve the problem and if did it will just be another case of Chinese football story. 1. Level of Indian Football is too low, improve it :- Our quality is just bad and it has multiple reasons. First being we are low quality players and the players who come to play are also lower quality. The abrod players who come here are mostly rejects of 2nd or even 3rd tier European leagues. For the 1st few years we were able to attract some big names but later we could't. Even the big names we brought in left for better shores like Elano, Mendoza and other bigger stars. We need to either bring in better players from better leagues or bring young players from better leagues who don't get enough game time. Like younger PL or top leagues' acdemy players. Also change the league format. We play a stupid format where the league run for 3 months and is played every 3/4 days. Move it to weekends and play the cup tournaments in mid-week 2. Grassroot development :- This is probably the 2nd most important thing. We need to identify and bring up talent. In Europe,kids start at age 4/5. Here we start around 10-12even as old as 15. We need to copy the european system like French one. That would bring in more players. Also, these young players need more exposure. We have started it but we need more direct contact. We should send our youngsters to top acdemiers to train and observe bigger academies. Stop this gimmicky tie_ups with Atletico or Fiorentina which does no help or Liverpool academy which won't work. 3. Bring in organisational change & reduce corruption:- I feel we just started out by removing Prafula Patil(fucker sucked out every single thing, he was the reason Air India went down, he is the reason India is still around 100s in FIFA ranking), still plenty of corruption. Lot of corruptions still in state FAs like the recent issue in TamilNadu FA or the Sexual Harassement issue that came out recently. Clean up all the mess or there is no point in doing all the above. 4. Pump the cash :- Do it after we hve done 50% in the above three. We need cah injection in grassroots,in the coaching staff, other organisational sectors and in players as well. Also I think, it's time Indian billionaires buy European teams, if Arabs with their pea-sized brains can buy teams pump money and spend recklessly then smart indian billionaires with good strategy and a brilliant sense of jugaad can do wonders in football world. I think the best buy that can happen now is for Tata to buy West Ham United. Why? because it is a match made ih heaven. Tata has been one of the best brands names in the entire world has a decent name in UK as well. Plus West Ham and Tata are closely related with steel works, third West Ham used to be one of the best academies Lampard, John Terry and many great players came out of it. I want some other indian billionaires to buy teams in other top 10 world leagues take our best talent and play along with them. Just buy rubbing shoulders with them can improve them a lot. Our GK is really good because of his European experience, other youngsters also deserve to get that. New talents like Ishan Pandita, Rahul KP, L Chhangte need to go abroad and inspire the next-gen. Just lamenting about those good old days won't do anything. If you are in Europe and wish to do something on these, hit me up. I'm in the best place to train in future footballers right now(Paris), I don't know where to go from here and I have other commitments, but I really wish I could do something!

Indonesia have similar problems with the dual-nationality thing and I don't think it's gonna change soon.

They had the biggest diaspora of fans in Qatar 2022 because Qatar imported all Indian migrant workers to attend the games

Thank you for helping me get through my college class :)

Zealand. You missed a decent intro to your video. Celtic (champions again ole ole) had an Indian called Mohamed Salim in 1936. He played a handful of exhibition matches in BARE FEET. He even scored a penalty. Celtic (champions again ole ole) asked him to remain for the season but he was homesick. Celtic (champions again ole ole) arranged a charity match and offered him 5% of the gate. He told Celtic to donate it (£1800) to local orphans.

It's not like there is no interest for Indian football. There's the Kolkata Derby which is the oldest and one of the fiercest derby in Asia between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal regularly packing over 80k fans in the stadium and a Indian sporting record 136k attendance in 1997 Federation Cup Derby. Then there's emerging clubs like Kerala Blasters, Bengaluru FC and others who are enjoying good support from their fans. But the majority of Indian "football fans" are mostly drawn towards European footballer with most of them being not aware of Indian domestic football. Some scenes from the 2015 Kolkata Derby: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rtiDZ5yoy9eqkYE.html Scenes from 1997 record 136k attendance Derby: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pK1jg9iU36qtYI0.html

they put all their resources into cricket.

India has invested in the sport same as China. Not as much perhaps, but they've increased spending and has gotten foreign investment

Zealand. You should do an FM save with Aberdeen. You could call the series Make Aberdeen Great Again. They even already make hats for the stream.

Hey Zeeland, speaking of getting banned/stripped by FIFA would you be interested in covering the shenanigans of Indonesia's football association in the last couple of years? They've been banned at least once by FIFA and almost got a second one in the last decade

Goa was Portuguese for a long time so maybe that's why.

Wonderful video. As a born and raised Canadian with Indian roots I have always wanted to see India succeed in soccer/football. However, their lack of success has been confounding, given the country's huge passion for the sport. How gigantic is this conundrum? It is absurd to think that India has a local derby that has a century long tradition (between the club teams of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal) held in the city of Kolkata that manages to fill a 120,000 seat stadium annually (which by the way was 2nd largest soccer/football stadium in the world for many years), yet the country fails to produce a world class team in the sport. Another interesting fact: India and China hold about 37% of the world's population yet neither country has been typically represented in the FIFA WC. Fun conspiracy theory: In the long run (over the next 20 years let's say), with the FIFA WC expanding to 48 teams, there will be a much higher chance that one of these teams, if not both, sneak into the WC. Wouldn't FIFA just love that?

Cricket has that place in India which Football has in Europe Companies Invest and Promote Cricket but not many companies reach out to football federation of India for support Just Lack of Infrastructute and Interest in people

You weren't kidding about Sunil Chhetri! The only games he's played outside of India are three games for the Sporting CP B team in Portugal (during the 2013/14 season) and one game for Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City) of the MLS back in 2010.

Bro roasted 1.408 billion people

Oh god I can hear the Indians coming

After the new aiff president came things really getting changed . we can see good developments in organizing tournaments for the indian national team and tournaments for u-19,16 etc. hopefully next year or after that the indian superleague currently the first division in india will see 20 teams + promotion and relegation.

India U17 (3) - (3) Real Madrid U17 India U17(2) - (1)Atletico Madrid U17 GG . Let's goo India !

Why Argentina don't play cricket 🏏

all those giving excuses here of not having proper infrastructure and support should shut their mouths cos we cant even compete with Syria and Iraq both countries suffered or still suffering from war does these countries have better infrastructure and support i don't think so these are same people blaming cricket for football's downfall in India in order to get the support you need to prove yourself you need to win which don't happen often or happens very rarely maybe if we are playing against Nepal or Bhutan in 10yrs time they also would start beating us. when i watch Indian team playing i find them Being slow not one player would be able to clear international fitness test they can even be beaten by a club level women football team that's how bad they are i am an Indian and it really hurt when i see my country get defeated in every tournament that they play

I just look at some KZfaq videos of football training in the US ( we don’t need to go beyond into even Europe) , I see the way they teach the young kids 6,7 8 years of age. That is missing in India I think. They get a full sized football field where they practice in a very methodical way with the cones. They start from the basics like passing the ball through the cones etc. but they would do it like 10000 times in a year probably or even more. Then that gets into muscle memory throughout their lives. It’s like even if they wake straight up from REM sleep they can do the same dribbling. The ball and the human become one. Ball control is what I think India should focus on

It is the 25th, how am I supposed to get to Taunton at such short notice?