2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup: Does India have enough time to prepare a competitive squad?

FIFA granting India the hosting rights for the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup is a big opportunity for India and its football, but as I have written earlier it is also a potential danger of failing and throwing us back in our football development cycle.

One of the area’s the All India Football Federation is placing a focus on is the India Under-17 national team, which will compete at the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup, our home FIFA World Cup. And the federation is doing so very, very rightly.

But on the other side I am a little worried in what I am hearing and reading from the administration and the technical staff about the preparation of the India Under-17s.

The fact is that any boy born on or after January 1, 2000 is eligible to play for India in the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup, so anyone who is in that age group should be a potential player for India, meaning millions of children could and should be made to play football with the best filtered through to the top.

In India the AIFF has been working on an own model with the AIFF Regional Academies and on top of it the AIFF Elite Academy being the system implemented due to the fact that the clubs, who normally around the world take care of youth development aren’t doing it on a whole in India though some have started to start their youth development system like Pune FC, Shillong Lajong FC and Sporting Club de Goa.

Now a little less than four years is normally not enough to create and build a strong foundation of a national youth development system in a country of the size of India. Friends of mine who have worked in youth development around the world for decades say, you need 15 to 20 years to development and implement an own working system, which will guarantee you a good level of quality of players and maybe also success, which in football shouldn’t be your yardstick.

Now coming back to India, the AIFF wants to focus on the AIFF Regional Academies and a small set of players, which is good but as I have written there needs to be a parallel system created in which millions of children play football and the best are filtered through the system in the next 12 months as 2015 onwards the best need to prepare for the 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup.

Only here the issue of funding comes in and I hope that the new Coca Cola and AIFF partnership will enable kids from across India to play football and the best get to represent India in this tournament.

The 2017 Under-17 FIFA World Cup remains a big opportunity and we need to utilise it or otherwise it is just another just chance for Indian football…