Why India was banned from football

India is home to 1.4 billion people, around a fifth of the global population.

It has an extremely rich football heritage and clubs which are among some of the oldest

in the world, and yet it has never qualified for a World Cup and the country remains one

of football’s great underperformers.

Recently, it was also suspended from the sport by FIFA.

But why?

Football in India is governed by the All India Football Federation, the AIFF.

Or at least it was and that was the root of the problem.

Back in 2011, the Indian Government passed a set of regulations which sought to encourage

good practise within sports’ ruling bodies.

Known as the Sports Code, the legislation was also motivated by a need to rid Indian

sports bodies of poor leadership and allegations of corruption.

Speaking to The Athletic’s Joey Durso, Pradhyum Reddy, a former footballer turned pundit,

described the problem “Some of these federations had people in charge for more than 20 years

and were running them like fiefdoms.

Reddy also described organisations being led by “people who were 75-80 years old” who

– in some instances – “do not have knowledge of the sport they are in charge of.”

And the Sports Code has teeth.

In 2022, in response to a failure in compliance, the Indian Supreme Court appointed a Committee

of Administrators to oversee Hockey India.

The same fate befell the national Table Tennis Federation, too.

In each case, an appointed group – the CoA – was installed to oversee the day-to-day

running of a national sports federation, with the aim of making it compliant with the sports

code.

And in May, the country’s Supreme Court removed the President of the AIFF, Praful

Patel, and his executive committee.

Patel is a 65-year-old career politician and member of parliament for the Nationalist Congress

Party and after he completed the maximum three terms as president in December 2020, he remained

in office, seeking an extension rather than a fourth-term, but with the ambition of seeing

a new set of AIFF statutes ratified before leaving his post.

So, the affair started with an administrative problem, but there have been other problems

as well.

In addition to poor international performance and, in some regions of India, the failure

to provide the adequate structures to encourage greater participation, the AIFF has experienced

other difficulties.

Ahead of the 2022 Women’s Asian Cup, the Indian team suffered the ignominy of having

to forfeit their place in their own tournament due to a Covid breach within their squad.

In addition to which, the AIFF was the subject of ridicule for having spent the equivalent

of £17,500 on three sessions with an astrology firm, with the aim of motivating the team

ahead of the Asian Cup.

“At a time when the AIFF repeatedly failed to conduct proper youth leagues, and many

prestigious tournaments were forced to shut down, incidents like this will further tarnish

the image of Indian football”, said Tanumoy Bose, the former India international goalkeeper.

It was a scandal, but not nearly as serious as allegations of sexual misconduct which

engulfed the u17 women’s team, after a coach – who denies the accusations - was sacked

and sent home from a tour.

According to journalist Arka Bhattachary, the surrounding context is also a problem.

“In the last two decades, we’ve seen a decline in the quality of Indian football.

We’ve had a very bad run internationally in terms of results,” he says, in a claim

backed up by the recent FIFA rankings, which places India in 104th place, between New Zealand

and Madagascar, countries with a combined population of just 33m people.

When Patel was removed and the AIFF was disbanded back in May, the Committee of Administrators

attempted to overhaul its constitution, putting it on its collision course with FIFA.

“The arbitrators tried to do too much,” says Pradhyum Reddy.

FIFA agreed.

Their statutes are strict on political influence within football and in June 2022, they led

a delegation which arrived in India with the aim of resolving the situation, setting deadline

dates for the creation of a constitution and the staging of elections to leadership positions.

From there, deadlock – primarily in the area of eminent player representation.

In its draft constitution, the Committee of Administrators had proposed an executive committee

50% comprised of eminent players.

FIFA disagreed, citing its own statutes which limit the number of player members within

an executive committee to 25%.

Other areas of contention also included the CoA maintaining the right to appoint an acting

president from outside the organisation, should a sitting president be unable to carry out

their job, and also a battery of modifications to the structure of domestic football in India,

including changes to promotion, relegation and control of the country’s highest league.

Fast-forward towards the end of summer and through several rounds of posturing and rhetoric,

to August 16th, when the Bureau of FIFA Council announced that it had “unanimously decided

to suspend the All India Football Federation (AIFF) with immediate effect due to undue

influence from third parties, which constitutes a serious violation of the FIFA Statutes”.

What FIFA was saying, was that the Indian Supreme Court – via the Committee of Administrators

it had appointed – was exercising an undue level of influence on Indian football.

It created ten days of chaos, not least because India was due to stage the U17 Women’s World

Cup in August.

However, government pressure would see the CoA terminated and power transferred back

to the AIFF on the 22nd August before, finally, the FIFA ban was rescinded on the 26th.

The u17 World Cup is due to take place as planned, but – according to an official

statement – with the promise that FIFA intends to monitor the situation and provide support

to the AIFF ahead of their September 2022 elections.