Indian Football fans: Fie on fickle

Indian football fans

For all of us optimistic Indian Football fans, the last week or so has been quite a setback. A 9-1 defeat to a full strength Kuwait and a 5-0 bashing by a second string UAE have got us very subdued as we gloomily think of what might happen when the Koreans and Australians start running circles around us come January. Its been a hard week for us as we’ve kept silent (mostly out of shame) while the the true ‘fans’ of the game and even ex-coaches are having their say on what is entirely wrong with everything from the AIFF to Bob Houghton to individual players. After all, its natural to be annoyed, to be angered by seeing players on whom ‘so much money’ has been spent perform like this.

Money. Yes. It was spent so that those 23 players will get to play with some top notch facilities. Shouldn’t we have? The suggestion seems preposterous to me. Next, this hue and cry about long ball football. This seems to be a more recent issue among Indian Football fans. Until September this year, we didn’t care about the style of Indian football. A couple of defeats later , we don’t want effective Premier league football, we want the Barcelona tiki-taka brand. Well, a lot of us have wanted a different brand of football for ages. November 2010 is NOT the time to complain about it.

Its been an upsetting week – football wise, fan base wise. Its so easy for a bunch of people to post publicly that “we should not have spent so much money on a bunch of old men” after we suffer 14-1 over two games – well where were these people when we won the AFC challenge cup and two Nehru cups? Was there one soul who questioned Bob Houghton’s tactics? Not one. And now that we’re less than two months away, we seem to have a plethora of critics, full with opinions on how football in India needs to be changed, be it administratively or technically. Plain hypocrisy, that’s what it is.

Sigh. OK, I am being quite unfair. Its hard to swallow these heavy defeats and carry on with the hope that something magical will happen, but this is not the time for any of us to play coach. This is not the time for us to evaluate the state of Indian Football or suggest that the training camps abroad were entirely useless. Save it. We’re two months away from the Asian cup. This is the biggest thing that has happened to Indian Football in over two decades. This is the time to curse softly (because that’s hard not to do) and yet maintain some belief in that football team we have all supported for such a long time. Jai Hind.