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The Indian national football team is currently ranked 168th in the FIFA World Rankings, their second worst-ever ranking amongst the 209 ranked nations and territories. Surely, India isn’t as bad as the rankings show, but Indian international goalkeeper Subrata Pal sounds very optimistic when he says that India could reach the Top 100 within 18 months if India regularly played on FIFA match dates.Subrata said, and I quote, “I can tell you we have the potential to be below 100. I need to thank the All India Football Federation for arranging the International Friendly against Singapore. We need to play on all FIFA Dates without fail for the next 18 months. If we play that regularly, I guarantee you, we will surely be below 100 in the FIFA Rankings. We are much better than 168!”
Now, I like the optimism that my friend Subrata Pal is showing here, but I fear this is something unrealistic given the reality of Indian football and how the FIFA World Rankings work. Even if India win all their friendlies over an 18 month period, then we would have to score massive upset wins against teams in the Top 50, ideally even a win against a Top 20 side, to even dream of being in the Top 100.
The other thing which is often forgotten in the discussions regarding India’s rankings, is not the fact that we don’t play enough friendlies, but also we do not participate in enough qualification matches which are higher value games then any international friendly. We are getting eliminated from the FIFA World Cup qualifiers too early, while the Asian Football Confederation has changed the format of the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers which has meant that India do not get a chance to play in the qualification group stage, and is left with only the AFC Challenge Cup. But there, India suffered three defeats earlier this year in Kathmandu, Nepal, which hasn’t helped India’s rankings cause.
Also, just playing friendlies won’t simply help, one needs to win matches. Then only one gets valuable points for the rankings and once our rankings go up, better quality sides will be wanting to play us, which will again help us with our rankings should we be able to get draws or wins against such sides.
It isn’t easy, but can be achieved over the four/five year period if there is a comprehensive plan for Team India on how to go about it and not just organise ad-hoc friendlies.
