The Sports-India Community

Are you saying even a Mohun Bagan-East Bengal match doesn't draw crowds? Is Bengali passion dead? Where are the prawns and the hilsas? Just market it well. It is a bigger rivalry than India-Pakistan. I believe Jay was referring to average crowds across the league, and not necessarily just the Calcu...

Not sure of the awareness of this on this board, but some disappointing news came out from Goa back in June. Salgaocar FC, one of the biggest and most historic & popular clubs from South Goa, have ceased senior team operations. Many of you might remember them from the NFL and i-League (prior to ...

The 2026 World Cup qualifying Draw (also used for Asian Cup qualifying) was done today. Not terrible for us, as we avoided the top 5 teams in Asia being in our group. Group A: #59 Qatar, #99 India, #127 Kuwait... and #157 Afghanistan or #183 Mongolia [Format, details and dates are in the 2026_FIFA_...

Mohun Bagan have brought in Jason Cummings, an Australian International (Scottish born) forward that has been lighting it up in the A-League (including winning the Grand Final man of the match award with a hat-trick in the 2023 A-League final). And he's still only 28 years old, so they must have pai...

Interesting. Most of those players on the list were at the very low tiers of the leagues, and are likely Indian origin vs players moving from India. None that would make it into the national team at this time. Dhruv looks interesting, and one to watch. Still too young, but I applaud his decision to ...

I'm also surprised that no Indian footballer has made a move abroad to play club football, whether via the ISL or independently. Not sure if this has anything to do with the ISL (choosing money to stay in an inferior league over trying working their tail off to make it in a more competitive foreign ...

Haha @jayakris

Yes, it's been more than a decade since I last came on here. Life happened, and not sure why this forum suddenly popped into my mind out of nowhere last night while I was catching up on some football news!

@shivani133 As you mentioned, the ISL is purely to progress corporate interests. Indian football at it's core continues to be beset by corruption, politics and straight up incompetence at the administration & management level. There is no real/clear "path" within the Indian football sy...

Very, very tough draw for India. Wouldn't be surprised if we get blown out of the water here.

In terms of passing & distribution, India actually played their best game of the tournament. I was surprised with the way the passed the ball and positioned themselves going forward. It was the shockingly poor defending that doomed the team. The defending was absolutely amateurish. No one presse...

I have to agree with munnabhai. Unlike some of the others, I am more optimistic about our medium/long term future. Not sure about other places, but atleast in Goa & Bombay, there are quite a few professionally run academies popping some. There is even one in Goa which has Brazilian coaches train...

I think it will be better to judge the AIFF team next year. They are a group of youngsters, and they still need time to develop both physically and tactically to enable them to compete with the big boys on a regular basis.

We got THE toughest draw possible. All 3 opponents are arguably top 6 in Asia (fortunately we avoided Japan). Judging by our team's recent performances in the friendly matches in Portugal & the Middle East, I can only hope they don't embarrass the nation too much.

Jay, I agree with your point that the kids must put in the hours if they are serious about turning professional. While the amount of kids putting in this effort might be low on a national level (viz a viz cricket), this is definitely not true in Goa, and I'm guessing in other football hotspots like ...

To play long ball route 1 type of football, you need players with height and good physical style of play to hold up the ball (normally used by Scandinavian teams and to a certain extent England). This will so obviously not work out with the Indian team, so I'm shocked that Bob is even trying it out....