Football In India: Only For Spectators?

This Sunday night thousands of people stayed up late to watch Spain take on the Germans in the Final of a highly successful Euro 2008.

Thousands had watched the whole of Euro 08 not caring for the timings of the broadcast which were at 12:15 a.m. IST.

Football in India has a peculiar position as thousands watch club football and international matches, yet hardly a fraction of that ever play the game.

People like playing cricket instead of football. And this has been the situation since India's 1983 Cricket World Cup triumph at lords.

After that day, everyone got hooked to cricket and football had to take a back seat. But this wasn't always the case, football and cricket were both introduced at the same time in India by the British.

Back then, football was more appealing to the masses as it was a common man's sport, unlike cricket, which was supposed to be a game played by only the rich aristocrats.

Indian football's golden days were in the 1950s and 60s when they finished fourth in the Olympics and made it to a World Cup only to get disqualified as the Indian team did not use proper footballing gear.

India was also one of the top Asian countries, for whom a win against Korea, Japan, and China was not much of a deal.

This all changed in 1983 when the Indian cricket team won the Prudential World Cup. Indians started worshipping the sport and football was all but forgotten.

The situation hasn't changed much all these years, with cricket's popularity increasing with the introducion of the IPL.

Indian football needs a revolution to achieve success and gain as much popularity as cricket.