BLURB:
In India there will be 11 million youth getting involved in the event, 2.8 million fans attending, 300 million getting introduced to the game and around 600 million watching it on TV.
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India will host the Under-17 FIFA World Cup next year and has automatically qualified to participate in the event. While accepting the hosting duties of the event at the conclusion of the last edition of the tournament in Chile in 2015, Javier Ceppi, the Director of the India edition, called it a significant opportunity, not only for Indian football but for nations across the globe.
Indeed, India will be hosting and participating in its first FIFA World Cup, and doing so in a way that only it could. For FIFA, the country with a population of 1.3 billion presents a gigantic market to expand the game. For the elite of world football, the FIFA U-17 World Cup is just a three-week affair, just another but an important tournament in a crammed international schedule. Not so for India, which will look to create a scenario in which 11 million youth get involved in football, 2.8 million fans attend the games, 300 million Indians get introduced to the game and some 600 million follow the tournament on televisions. Figures like these would likely change the history of the sport in the country.
Despite cricket being the most followed sport in India, football is the second most popular sport in the country and has come along in leaps and bounds in the last decade. The I-League was formed in 2007 in an effort to professionalize the sport domestically, and the creation of the Indian Super League in 2013 showcased Indian football to the world with a little help from international players, some in their twilight years. Furthermore, in 2011 the country played in the AFC Asian Cup for the first time in 24 years and the hosting of the Under-17 World Cup would be the final leap for the country.
With this development and such a sizeable population, India needs to improve on their current FIFA ranking of 162.
It is not surprising that Nicolai Adam, the German coach of Indian junior national team, has called his side the biggest underdogs ever to play in a FIFA World Cup. The Indian junior team beat teams like Bahrain, Lebanon and lost to Iran in the AFC qualifiers and defeated several teams in their exposure tour in Dubai. But the coach has warned that the World Cup would be a different ball game. The team will have to defend a lot and small mistakes will cost you goals. Adam needs the cream of Indian junior football talent; players who are good in one-on-one situations, who are mentally strong and those who can stand up to big crowd pressures.
To develop good future teams, India wants to follow the European model, bring in great facilities and infrastructure, and also develop a national youth system with focus on scouting. But with the limited resources that India has to offer to football, it appears to be an unrealistic target for now. However, what the U-17 World Cup can achieve is pull in the numbers with the passion for the sport. Football superpowers like Argentina and Brazil do not have the best of facilities but they still produce some of the best footballers in the world. The difference is that these countries have more youth with the passion for the game than India. If not the European model, we can always emulate the South American model.
