Why India is not playing at the FIFA World Cup ?
India, the largest country by population on Earth, is not playing at the football world cup. Currently ranked 139th in FIFA, the Indian team is going through some of the hard times in their international football. After failing to qualify for the AFC Asian Cup 2027, the Blue Tigers must look back and try to rebuild from scratch. The fans, who are less in numbers than cricket lovers, are busy criticising the players and the coaching staff. Even some seasonal fans who might only watch a few European football and world cup, are questioning why India isn't at the football’s biggest stage? Why, why and when it will be possible.
To answer this question, first we need to understand that before dreaming of playing in the FIFA World Cup, the Indian team and AIFF should focus on how our team can be regular at the Asian Cup. Because in football, there's no shortcut, you need to go step by step, and the first step for the Blue Tigers is this Asian Cup.
Earlier we qualified for two consecutive Asian Cups in 2019 and 2023, although our performance was not good enough in the last campaign. And the dry state of affairs starts from there, and right now the situation is like a bizzare one because the head coach of the Indian football team, Khalid Jamil, openly states in press conferences that he is preparing for SAFF championship, which we won a lot of times, and you will be surprised to know which country plays in this tournament, just google it sometime.
There is a say among the Twitter fanbase of Indian football that there is never a dull day in this current scenario of football in India. There is discussion ongoing among relevant authorities whether ISL, the country's top tier league will happen in the 2026-27 season or not. The last ISL season was very short due to several contract issues with league organisers - FSDL. The clubs may shut down their operations if the ISL doesn't happen. The players, the coaching staff, and all the people who are associated with the beautiful sport can overnight become jobless. The future might be dark or might not be, given the outcome of the ongoing discussion. But if the clubs shut down, from where new players will come ? From where the players for the national team will come from ? The questions are big, even bigger than why we are not playing at the world cup and that's why we just need to focus on running the ISL, IFL and other 3rd, 4th tier leagues and build a sustainable ecosystem so that the clubs don't face much financial constraints.
If the ISL happens from September 4, the clubs should be given free hands on operations of the league, because the people who are sitting in the top position of AIFF including the president, are utterly incompetent, the supporters of Indian football also know this very much. God knows when they will start following their own “Vision 2047” roadmap launched in January, 2023.
Another thing most people say is that, with a 1.4 billion population, we should have a bigger talent pool. This is true, we should have a bigger talent pool, but for that we need good infrastructures and facilities. Most state governments are busy only building cricket stadiums, like the new one being built at Gorakhpur, UP. But Inter Kashi, a ISL team from Varanasi continues to play their home matches from Kishore Bharati stadium in Kolkata. Not only Inter Kashi, even Punjab FC plays their home games in Delhi, there is not even one standard FIFA certified stadium in these two respective states.
On the other hand, in the age group tournaments and qualifiers, AIFF only relies on 2-3 academics to pick talents. It needs to change, the bigger the pool be, the better the quality will be. Just look at what Japan has been doing since the 2000s, and where they are now, competing toe to toe against top football nations. In 2025, at the AFC u17 qualifiers where Japan beat the Indian u17 team on 8-4 scoreline, in the after match press conference one Indian journalist asked the Japanese head coach - What do you think about the Indian team, are there any good players according to you ? The Japanese coach replied that maybe 2-3 players are good and skillful, who can have a good career ahead, but then he goes on saying that the Indian team only have those 11 players who might be the best in their country, but in our team( Japan) there are 23 players who are on the same level, and there are more 250 players who are also on the same level like those 23 players. But they didn't get the chance because he( Japanese coach) didn't call them up. This is where Indian football needs to introspect more to build a larger talent pool and better grassroot academies.
In my opinion, currently there are many problems like these in Indian football, but not qualifying for the World Cup is not the one. If we don't solve these problems, we are not going to play in the world cup anywhere in the near future. And to those clickbait fans who are posting all those stuffs why India is not in the world cup, just ignore them, let them bark, because they don't know the actual problems, if they knew, they wouldn't have posted those things.
Last but not the least, “One day when those European football merchants return to support the Indian Football team, I'll be proud that I supported my country when they were 174th in the FIFA rankings.”
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