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Abstract
In terms of the genealogy of soccer as a modern sport, India certainly ranks as a giant. So long as she was a colony, her true potential as a soccer power remained undetermined. After Independence, however, India emerged as a formidable Asian force on the international stage. The story of India's tryst with Olympic football offers an interesting repertoire of stunning performances including decent success, appalling defeat and long absence, ranging from India's modest start in the London Olympics of 1948 through a huge defeat in the Helsinki Olympics of 1952 to a stirring performance in 1956. And when India's spirited display in the Rome Olympics of 1960 was followed by the startling victory in the Jakarta Asian Games in 1962, the nation seemed ready to have a crack at the international level. But the momentum was lost quite astonishingly within a decade. The decline set in and the giant had fallen asleep again. Yet the slumber has been mostly dreamy with intermittent magic spells of insomnia, albeit without any sustained impact on the nation's Olympic soccer fortune. Since 1960 the Indian football team never qualified for the Olympics. This essay, looking deep into this much-publicized metaphor of the sleeping giant, deciphers the long-term underlying processes and the cultural politics of soccer that explains both the legacies and the prospects of Indian football in the Olympic Games, linking thereby its past, present and future. In the process, it also argues that Indian soccer's failure to make a mark in the Olympics reflects the nation's failure to develop an enduring Olympic culture over time.
Notes
1 CitationCooper, ‘Foreword’, ix.
2 Citation‘Report on the Conference of Indian Football’, 86. I am grateful to the IFA officials for access to this document.
3 Citation‘Report on the Conference of Indian Football’, 86. I am grateful to the IFA officials for access to this document, 85.
4 Citation‘Report on the Conference of Indian Football’, 86. I am grateful to the IFA officials for access to this document
5 Shamya Dasgupta, ‘India is Loser, AIFF scoring the own-goal of corruption. Football: FIFA official slams unprofessional, corrupt system’, Indian Express, January 13, 2004.
6 Shamya Dasgupta, ‘India is Loser, AIFF scoring the own-goal of corruption. Football: FIFA official slams unprofessional, corrupt system’, Indian Express, January 13, 2004
7 For a useful history of India's place in international football through the ages, see Basu, Stories from Indian Football, especially Chaps 3–6, 8–11 and 13; and CitationMukherjee, The Story of Football, Chap. 11.
8 India defeated the strong Metropolitan Police side 3–1, Pinner Club 9–1, Hayes Club 4–1 and Alexandra Park 8–2. For details on these matches, see Amrita Bazar Patrika, July 19, 1948, 6; July 25, 1948, 12; July 28, 1948, 6; July 30, 1948. Interestingly enough, in some of these matches most Indian players played with boots.
9 Amrita Bazar Patrika, July 19, 1948, 6.
10 The Statesman, August 2, 1948, 6. Sailen Manna and Mahavir Prasad missed the opportunities to score.
11 Cited in Mukherjee, The Story of Football, 132.
12 After Indian side defeated the Isthmian league team, a strong amateur combination by a convincing margin of 3-1.
13 Cited in Amrita Bazar Patrika, August 24, 1948, 6.
14 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 39.
15 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 39
16 The Statesman, July 17, 1952, 6.
17 Amrita Bazar Patrika, July 17, 1952, 6.
18 The Statesman, July 18, 1952, 6.
19 The Statesman, July 18, 1952, 6
20 The Statesman, July 18, 1952, 6
21 The Statesman, July 18, 1952, 6
22 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 50.
23 India went down to Yugoslavia 1–4 in the semi-final while it lost to Bulgaria 0–3 in the match to decide third place.
24 Cited in CitationDe Mello, Portrait of Indian Sport, 197–8.
25 Cited in Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 59–60.
26 The Statesman, 5 December 1956, p. 10.
27 India lost to mighty Hungary 1–2, drew with France 1–1 and went down to Peru 1–3.
28 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 66.
29 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 66, 99.
30 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 66
31 India's improved performance in the early 1980s was due mainly to the able guidance of its Yugoslav coach Ciric Milovan. Under his coaching India did well in the 1984 Asia Cup Qualifiers and reached the finals, while at home it put up some spirited fights against world class sides in the Jawaharlal Nehru Invitational Gold Cup.
32 The Santosh Trophy, the inter-provincial tournament, was instituted in 1941 by the AIFF.
33 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 133.
34 Such tournaments include the IFA Shield, Durand Cup, Rovers Cup and DCM Trophy.
35 The foreign tours included the Mardeka Tournament at Kualalampur as well as the King's Cup in Bangkok apart from other invitation tournaments in different parts of Asia.
36 Of these players, 19 were from Bengal while one each came from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
37 Quoted in Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 134.
38 CitationGhose, ‘Club versus Country?’
39 In fact, the players were asked to give a voluntary declaration to that effect. For details, see Amrita Bazar Patrika and Ananda Bazar Patrika, February 20, 1981.
40 Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 136–7.
41 For a detailed discussion of the AIFF's pecuniary anomalies, see CitationMajumdar and Bandyopadhyay, Goalless, 172–4.
42 To give one instance of such trends of factionalism within AIFF, the row between Pankaj Gupta on the one hand and Manindra Dutta Ray and Ziauddin on the other over the selection of the coach and some players assumed ugly proportions affecting the integrity and balance of the side during the 1952 Helsinki Olympic tour.
43 For details on this point, see Basu, Stories from Indian Football, 46–9.
44 CitationDutta Ray, ‘Playing Experience Needed in our Football Administration’. Incidentally Dutta Ray was the president of AIFF at that time.
45 Shyam Sundar Ghosh, ‘A Messy Affair’, The Statesman, November 25, 1998.
46 Gautam Roy, ‘No Hopers on a Sinking Boat’, The Statesman, November 25, 1998.
47 Jaydeep Basu, ‘Visionless NFL Clubs Ignore Long-term Development’, Hindustan Times, December 7, 2003.
48 A. Vinod, ‘Football is Groping in the Dark, and the AIFF Couldn't Care Less’, The Hindu, April 29, 2000.
49 Qaiser Mohammad Ali, ‘National Soccer League Found Wanting’, from the Indian Abroad News Service, in www.indianfootball.com.
50 Qaiser Mohammad Ali, ‘National Soccer League Found Wanting’, from the Indian Abroad News Service, in www.indianfootball.com
51 Bill Adams, ‘Saving Soccer in India’. www.indianfootball.com.
52 Novy Kapadia, ‘The Millennium Cup Flop’. January 2001. indya.com football diary.
53 Novy Kapadia, ‘The Millennium Cup Flop’. January 2001. indya.com football diary
54 Novy Kapadia, ‘The Millennium Cup Flop’. January 2001. indya.com football diary
55 Novy Kapadia, ‘A Short History’, Sahara Times, August 30, 2003, 36.
56 Mario Rodrigues, ‘Hope and Hoopla’, The Statesman, May 23, 2001.
57 CitationMadhavan, ‘Wake Up, A.I.F.F.!’
58 Arnab Ghosh, ‘Indians Should Keep Pace at Least with the Asians’, The Hindu, April 15, 2000.
59 The trouble that started in Bengal spread not to the states but to the senior clubs – Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, Mohammedan Sporting and Tollygunge Agragami from Calcutta, Salgaocar, Churchill Brothers from Goa, Mahindra United from Mumbai, F.C. Kochin from Kerala and JCT Mills Phagwara from Punjab, most of them being owned or sponsored by industrialists.
60 For a detailed understanding of the episode, see ‘Off-field Dribbles kept Football in the News’. PTI, December 28, 2000. Featured in indianfootball.com. Also see Amardeep Bhattal, ‘IPFA on a Collision Course with AIFF’, Sports Tribune, December 2, 2000.
61 Ramu Sharma, ‘Wake-up Call to Indian Football’, Sports Tribune, December 16, 2000.
62 Ramu Sharma, ‘Wake-up Call to Indian Football’, Sports Tribune, December 16, 2000
63 Ramu Sharma, ‘Wake-up Call to Indian Football’, Sports Tribune, December 16, 2000
64 Vision Asia is the AFC's grand plan for a continent-wide programme to raise the standards of Asian football at all levels, be it on the field of play, administration or sports science. This is the brainchild of AFC President Mohamed Bin Hammam, who launched the programme in January 2003. Nine months later, after much fine-tuning, Hammam unveiled Vision Asia as a well-defined blueprint to international delegates and VIPs during the FIFA Congress in Doha, Qatar. The President firmly believes that Asia, with its 3.7 billion population, has the potential to produce many world-class footballing nations. His ultimate goal is for an Asian team to one day win the FIFA World Cup. Hammam has identified 11 disciplines – akin to 11 players on the football field – that Vision Asia must address if Asian countries are to catch up with their counterparts in Europe and the rest of the world. They are: National Associations (goalkeeper); Marketing, Grassroots, Coach Education, Referees, Sports Medicine (defenders); Men's Competitions, Women's Competitions, Futsal (midfielders); Media, Fans (forwards). AFC has already recruited experts with specialist skills in each discipline. These consultants are being assisted by development officers, one for each of the four zones – West Asia, Central/South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia. (Gathered from www.the-aiff.com/vision_India.php).
65 FIFA president Sepp Blatter initially told the world that ‘The future is Asia’. The AFC, since then, adopted the phrase as its motto.
66 Colaso revealed this in a personal communication to Suvam Pal, then a sports journalist with the Sahara Times. For details, see CitationPal, ‘Guts, Grits and Glory’. I am grateful to Suvam Pal for giving me the opportunity to go through this paper.
67 ‘Development of Manipur to be Fast-tracked’. 22 July 2005. www.the-afc.com. Incidentally the AFC delegation found to their surprise as many as 200 fields and 296 clubs in Manipur.
68 ‘Development of Manipur to be Fast-tracked’. 22 July 2005. www.the-afc.com. Incidentally the AFC delegation could find to their surprise as many as 200 fields and 296 clubs in Manipur
69 These 12 clubs are: SAIRC, NEROCA, TRAU, Eastern Sporting Union, MPSC, Southern Sporting Union, YMC (all from Imphal), RACC (Churachandpur), Kakching FC (Kakching), AMOFA (Moirang), PYC (Thoubal) and YWO (Bishnupur).
70 ‘Successful Workshop held in Manipur to Prepare the Ground for Schools League’. 28 May 2006; ‘Club Development Workshop held in Manipur’. 11 July 2006. www.the-afc.com.
71 Available at www.the-aiff.com/news_details.
72 Shaji Prabhakaran, Director of Vision India, admitted this in ‘Delhi to Launch school Football League Wednesday’. www.indianmuslims.info.
73 ‘India Could Become Major Football Power: Bin Hammam’. www.the-afc.com.
74 ‘Delhi “Vision India” Project Slower than Expected’. http://footballdynamicsasia.blogspot.com/search/label/Vision%20Asia.
75 Velappan reiterated during the launch to the media. Cited in Pal, ‘Guts, Grits and Glory’.
76 ‘“Vision India” Goes Practical’, Times of India, July 21, 2006.
77 Nilanjan Datta, ‘The Future Lies in the Hands of the Indians’, Times of India, May 13, 2004.
78 Baichung Bhutia, ‘Slow Death’, in Game Plan, reproduced in www.indianfootball.com.