AIFF chief mocked on social media for suggesting India could qualify for 2022 World Cup

The president of the All India Football Federation (AIFF), Praful Patel, has been at the heart of many well-documented stories over the years, but his target of World Cup qualification for India has been met with outbursts on social media.

Patel stated at last night's AIFF awards gala that he hopes for the Indian national team to break into the world top 50 as well as qualify for the World Cup as early as 2022. The 2022 World Cup will be staged in Qatar and Patel has also previously spoken well about the much-criticised Gulf nation's capacity to host the biggest event in football.

However, his suggestion has been met with ridicule on Twitter as Indian football fans and experts ripped Patel apart. Here are few of the funny jibes and responses to his comments:

This really is some extraordinary amount of delusion and, as usual, a poor understanding of the sport. No surprises though. https://t.co/L5jkFYkBt2

— Akarsh Sharma (@Akarsh_Official) June 9, 2017

Just gets worse every time he says it. You'd expect the eons he's spent in office would've given him *some* sense.

— Abhishek P (@shakeyiyer) June 9, 2017

Finding a solution to the merger will be more motivating to the players than his crap speeches. He should probably concentrate more on that

— Jenn (@jeni_sha15) June 9, 2017

Pigs will fly before that https://t.co/O1PF5S0LEv

— Somnath Sengupta (@baggiholic) June 9, 2017

Let's focus on qualifying for the AFC first. Will tackle 2022 next year.

— Footynions (@footynions) June 9, 2017

I hope to become the President of this country on July 20 https://t.co/X3HO55aE8o

— Rishabh (@rishabhism) June 9, 2017

Yes, and we'll win the World Cup by 2030 as well.

— Shraishth Jain (@shraishth_jain) June 9, 2017

With the future of Indian club football currently uncertain owing to deadlocked talks regarding the merger of I-League, India's top division, and the Indian Super League (ISL) and the yet undecided structure of the country's top division football league, disillusioned followers of Indian football seem to have a hard time digesting Patel's platitudes. Earlier this week, all the power brokers of Indian football headed to Malaysia for an important stakeholders’ meeting with the Asian Football Confederation in Kuala Lumpur only to see nothing materialising at the end of it.

India are currently ranked 100 in the FIFA rankings, but that is hardly an indicator that the Blue Tigers are close to qualifying for the FIFA World Cup anytime soon. India reaching the FIFA top 50 is another stated aim for Patel, but with Australia sitting on double the number of points as India in the 50^th position, this comes as another impossible dream for India in the immediate future.

This latest social media attack on Patel suggests that not everyone is happy with Indian football's state of affairs and false pretensions and delusions of grandeur will only serve to undermine any good work that Patel and co have done for Indian football thus far.