This episode of Let's Talk About: Indian Football cuts through the lazy excuse that India is strictly a cricket nation. The domestic game has massive pockets of fierce fan devotion, yet remains trapped by its own failings. Abhinandan Sekhri sits down with Dr Shaji Prabhakaran, former AIFF Secretary General and current AFC Executive Committee member, alongside Anuj Gupta, president of the Delhi Soccer Association, to diagnose why the sport isn’t capitalising on its potential in India.
Prabhakaran argues India’s failure stems from a narrow approach to youth development that prioritises short-term talent scouting over building a lasting sporting culture. He notes that up to age 11, Indian children match their global counterparts in technical terms, but there is an immediate structural drop-off thereafter. Making matters worse, standalone academies function like “kirana shops” that are isolated from any real competitive calendar, he argues.
Gupta sharpens the point with the age window that matters most: “After 12, there’s only a few percent improvement you can do. We have lost the ability to develop talent after the age of 12.” For him, India’s academies simply haven’t focused hard enough on the 6-12 age bracket, and the ones that exist rarely have the best coaches training there.
On the economics of the sport in India, Prabhakaran rejects the idea that the country lacks demand. With roughly 300 million fans, he remarks, “Football has a bigger story to tell, and we are failing to communicate that.”
Ultimately, both agree the money and passion already exist, but what’s missing is a federation-led push to organise and amplify it.
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