Found this a very interesting read
That was an interesting read. But how can a national program that has failed to qualify for the last five World Cups suddenly be in tatters?
That happened long ago. They suck.
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Ultimately its not that in a different environment they could not find a world class team, its just that so long as politics pervades, theyre destined to be terrible
Now we need an explanation for why India sucks.
I find it amazing that neither China or India has produced a decent soccer player. You’d think just based on numbers alone it would have happened.
With all the bikes in China, I wonder why they haven’t produced any world class cyclists.
If the problem is a thin pool at the grass roots level, and govt/political meddling at the top (the Chinese way), then those issues don’t seem to affect their other sports…. Gymnastics for example.
I don’t buy the reasoning.
I buy it. We’ve seen it here in Canada. About 15 years ago we completely overhauled our grassroots soccer system. Now the focus is on developing talent rather than trying to win games (no official scores kept until they are 12 years old (however, the kids all know the score…)).
Keen to impress their bosses, officials in this top-down system inevitably opt for a “short-termist” approach that sacrifices genuine improvement over time for quick fixes, Mr Dreyer explains.
This is not how you develop talent.
The coach of my son’s development team encourages players to be creative, even if they make mistakes. He’s also teaching structure and whatnot.
Look at Canada’s rise in soccer in the past 5 years now that the talent working it’s way up the system.
This wasn’t an accident.
Pretty adept at track cycling, same as Malaysia - no real professional cycling presence but a well established track cycling program.
I do. The sports are different. There’s a whole swathe of sports where you can nurture olympic level excellence by identifying a pool of talent, doesn’t even need to be huge, and throwing resources at them. In certain sports the cream of even a relatively small pool cab rise very high.
In other sports the barrier to entry is so low, and the range of attributes that make players great is so broad, that you can’t identify with sufficient accuracy who the real talents are. You have to have mass participation and only as talent reveals itself can you identify with confidence who warrants focus.
In most countries cycling, gymnastics, rowing, swimming (to a degree) are all examples of sports in which you can still create a world class program from the top down.
Soccer is the archetypal sport that has to be bottom up, which is why for all the progress the US has made it still lags.
India is easy. Cricket is their football and their it’s played from the slums to the highest levels of society
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As far as putting a ball into goal, Indians prefer to do that with hockey sticks rather than their feet. 
That makes sense.
Easier to create an individual star or few, vs an entire team, which would be another difference.
Not just that, soccer is massive all around the world. The collective pool of talent is massive. Gymnastics is not. The collective pool of talent for gymnastics is tiny compared to soccer.
Elite soccer is about practicing a lot, with a lot of other really good players.
Even if some small percentage were into soccer that would still be huge numbers. Surely there are people playing soccer in India?
I don’t know but hockey, cricket, squash and badminton are huge. Not sure there’s any football infra in india
Don’t fucking change the title of my threads
Seems like India likes to have a tool in hand when they play with balls?