Panaji: Last year, Indian football lived out its annus horribilis.
Mostly under former coach Igor Stimac – a defender who had helped Croatia win third place at the 1998 World Cup in France — the national team failed to log in even a single international win to its name. The team played 11 games and lost six. Five games were drawn, four goals were scored and 15 conceded, numbers that prompted even the staunchest fans to turn their backs on a team that had promised so much only a year back, when India won an unprecedented three trophies and broke into the top 100 of the FIFA rankings for the first time since 2017.
Last year also happened to be when Sunil Chhetri decided to call time on a much-feted 19-year-old international career.
Today, barely three months into 2025, the state of the game in India continues to be so dire that Manolo Marquez, Stimac’s successor after the Croatian was shown the door, has had to coax the 40-year-old striker to come to the aid of the party. Chhetri has been recalled in the hope that he will bail out India in the opening clash of the Asian Cup 2027 final round qualifiers against Bangladesh – that slippery regional rival — later this month.
With 94 goals, the talismanic Chhetri is India’s greatest goal-getter, but his return to the Indian fold is both good news and bad.
He is third to only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in the all-time active scorers’ list, but last season, the goals had dried up, his last goal coming off a penalty in a 2-1 defeat to Afghanistan in March 2024.
But Chhetri’s returns are not even half the problem.
Indian football is tottering while facing a weird predicament. A tiny sample: Marquez, Stimac’s successor after the Croat was shown the door last year, is a much-respected Spanish coach known to mould young talent and get results.
However, in a move awash with potential conflicts of interest, he was entrusted with the tricky responsibility of coaching both club, FC Goa, and country, an arrangement that suited the All India Football Federation (AIFF), its hands forced due to financial constraints, having paid a huge compensation ($400,000; ₹ 3.36 cr approx) to the sacked Stimac who had threatened to approach FIFA over unlawful termination.
At the moment, Marquez reportedly draws his salary from his FC Goa employers, while the AIFF only pays for allowances during the National team camps, the understanding being that he will be full time with the AIFF from next year till May 2026, a deal that will cost the AIFF approximately ₹3 crore.
But secretly, like any self-respecting mister, Marquez would be squirming inside. The Indian scenario presents such a contrast to where the 56-year-old Catalan perhaps first learnt his trade.
Spain are the leading light of international football. Their biggest name is a 17-year-old, teeth-behind- braces schoolboy winger, Lamine Yamal, while their 40-year-old maestros do the playmaking in the middle rung of the depth-rich La Liga. In India, he has to recall a retired hero because he finds himself with no options.
Spain and India are not exactly apples and oranges, you could argue. But it is also true that football – its processes and philosophies – is as alike as it can be dissimilar. Indian club football has been borrowing liberally from Spanish thought, but little or nothing of it shows up on the National side.
In the four matches that India have played under Marquez, the team is still without a win. If it’s any consolation, there’s been just one loss, while the other three ended in draws. Strangely comforting has been the fact that the coach wasn’t too happy with draws against Mauritius, Malaysia and higher-ranked Vietnam.
Yet, there hasn’t been a striker of note to put his hand up and be counted.
Domestic forwards have fared poorly in the current ISL season. With 12 goals, second only to the Moroccan Alaaeddine Ajaraie at NorthEast United, Chhetri is in fine form, but his comeback from retirement exposes just how bare Indian football’s talent cupboard is.
The forwards have never really delivered in the top-tier of Indian football, with most players struggling in front of goal. Only Brison Fernandes, a young winger from Goa, features among the top 10. Among the top 20, there’s Subhashish Bose, a left-back from Mohun Bagan Super Giant.
Perhaps, Chhetri’s aura has loomed so large over Indian football over the past two decades that no one was found suitable. But that can never be an excuse.
Indian football’s problems are too deep-rooted to disappear overnight, or even just under a year.
Money certainly doesn’t seem to be the problem. There’s plenty of investment and footballers in the top-tier earn handsomely. A national team player for example will earn anywhere between Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2.5 cr annually, depending on which club he chooses, a huge reward for a country that’s currently ranked 127th in the world.
No wonder players are comfortable here and are in no mood to move abroad, play in lower divisions of Europe, and improve themselves, rubbing shoulders with those who are of a different level.
Bhaichung Bhutia was among the first Indian footballers who challenged himself by choosing to move abroad in the early 2000s. The former India captain felt Chhetri coming out of retirement was good news for the national team but wasn’t too sure if it will help Indian football move ahead.
“It’s very unfair to say Indian players don’t get the opportunities to play,” countered Bhutia, “There are other positions; attacking midfielders, wingers, lot of Indians are fielded there. Our youth development programmes must provide a more mature environment for attackers to grow. You see the best goal scorers are from South America because they create that culture as a kid for you. You have to be smart. That smartness has to be brought out right from a young age.
“In grassroots, what we should include is a lot of small-sided games, streets football. The most important aspect for a striker (to score) is not to dribble or shoot from distance but get into the right positions. Great strikers always get into the right positions and make it look easy,” he added.
A striker needs not just a nose for goals but also the skillset. But who’ll help him acquire that? “We don’t coach the position very well. We don’t have specialists,” pointed out Dempo CEO and AFC Pro Coaching License holder, Pradhyum Reddy.
But do clubs – and coaches – have the luxury of time for that?
“In football, the problem is that you don’t have time (to achieve results),” Marquez said during a Townhall with TOI in Goa last month, “If you lose four, five, six games you are usually sacked. For a coach, it’s very difficult to have a long vision. But, despite the difficulties, you have to move in the correct way, follow the process and wait for results. Sometimes, your ideas may be correct, but they will sack you (if the results are not good).”
“Here,” Marquez strove to point out, “The challenge is not for me, it’s for Indian football. The aim is to develop Indian football, step by step. It will take time, maybe one, two or three years.”
When the Indian Super League (ISL) was launched in 2014 with much fanfare, it helped attract more fans to the game. There was better crowd attendance, women flocked too for the first time and ground conditions improved drastically. There was professionalism in all aspects, but the standard of football hasn’t improved.
Some have blamed it on the contract between FSDL, which runs the league, and the AIFF, which allows the top-tier not to have relegation. It simply means clubs are not under pressure to give their best once they know they aren’t going to make it to the playoffs. Everyone in football knows, that without relegation there is no competitive football in the league and there is no pressure on the players. That aspect greatly weakens things in the domestic competition.
Then, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: foreign players. East Bengal’s young David Lalhlansanga has shown promise, scored four goals from 16 appearances, but he’s often been left on the bench in favour of Greek Dimitrios Diamantakos and Brazilian Cleiton Silva, despite the duo’s terrible form.
At a time when foreigners accounted for 80% of all ISL goals, the foreign-player quota in ISL’s starting XI was cut down from five to four in 2021-22. There were hopes of a greater influx of Indian talent. That did happen, but the forwards have not really measured up to the challenge.
“There are players (in the ISL) who would do great in the second division which doesn’t have foreign players. It would help them develop but obviously they won’t get the same money. If the money is significantly more, you cannot blame the players (for choosing to sit on the bench),” said Reddy.
“Why not reduce foreign players at least in I-League?” asks Reddy, “If AIFF reduces the quota, there will be more opportunities. It does not make sense for clubs to register six when four are allowed to play. It’s a waste of money and opportunity to have two extra foreigners on the bench.”
Former stars point to more obvious shortcomings.
“Indian forwards must enhance their capabilities,” said former India striker and captain IM Vijayan. “Currently, they lack the stamina to sustain performance throughout a complete match. Despite showing promise in club competitions, they underperform while representing the national team. Their commitment falls short of what previous generations demonstrated.”
That is perhaps why Marquez clearly marks Sunil Chhetri out from the rest of the domestic strikers. Commitment, and his famed mentality, even if all that’s revolving around his comeback is nothing short of surprising for any self-respecting football landscape that harbours ambitions of playing the World Cup soon.
