True, but India is typically in the top-25 to top-75 in the world in other world sports, but we have never breached even top-90 for the last 4+ decades. And, in my opinion, football is a sport that does not require some of the genetic traits that are not Indians' strengths (in comparison to sports like basketball, volleyball, tennis, swimming, running, etc, and even badminton). Certain superb skills that make people go "ooh, ah" is often something that comes out of large populations, like Ramesh Kishnan's hand skills, Chandrasekhar's googlies or Aditi Ashok's putting. Even that has not occurred in football from India. We have hardly produced such players with super skills in football. That is because the true population that plays football in India is very small. The only reason for why enough kids just don't play it, is very simple. They don't see it being played around them. Ask any boy under age 10 around the world what game they will like to play with kids around if they see it being played. Football (except in the Indian subcontinent - as they only hear of cricket). Nothing to learn in football. Just join whoever is kicking a ball around and just play. That is why it is the "beautiful game". Not in India. Nobody is kicking a ball around for others to join. If there is even a 40 feet by 20 feet area near a kids houise, they only see cricket being played there.arjun2761 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 30, 2022 7:04 pm I don't think the lack of space is the primary cause of our football ineptness although it is likely a factor. Primarily, India has a very poor sports culture (in terms of both participation and rigorous training in the more physically demanding sports) and we perform relatively poorly in all sports relative to our size (even if you consider India as a 100 MM population country with respect to potential sports participation).
Actually we are probably like a poor 100M (maybe 50M) country in other sports. In many other sports like tennis, badminton etc, the kids try cricket first and then come back by age 11 or 12. That happens from football to other sports in other countries too. But in India it happens from cricket. Too late by age 12 to get good at football. In my opinion, when it comes to football, we are not even a 25M country. The number of u12 kids who play football is that few.
Old discussion, anyway. I am just saying that I have not changed my view for a couple of decades on this. And we have not improved one bit in that period, when our domestic league etc did improve quite a bit and we have brought in some good coaches and all that. General sporting culture has also been improving in two years, as our Olympics and other record show. We are still not producing players for football.