The “International Federation of Association Football” or FIFA recently honoured the captain of the Indian Football team, Sunil Chhetri. Complimenting him as “Captain Fantastic”, FIFA released three videos as a tribute to the Indian skipper. With a total duration of more than 1.5 hours, these videos intend to throw light on the legendary achievements of Sunil Chhetri. In the outlook of these videos, one can deduce that FIFA bears no intentions to promote Football in a large market like India, rather focusing only on the genuinely remarkable contributions of Sunil Chhetri. Chhetri is the fifth player in the world to hold a record of scoring 80 international goals for the national team. Further, he ranks third amongst the active football players in the world. The first one on the charts is Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo with 117 goals, followed by Argentina’s Lionel Messi; Sunil Chhetri holding the third position is a moment of pride for us Indians. However, it is quite embarrassing to know that most of Indians have not even heard of Sunil Chhetri, let alone his achievements. Indians not so keen on football would still acknowledge the legendary Cristiano or Messi but may hardly know anything about the Captain of the Indian Football team and this is saddening.
Great Football Player !
It has always been a matter of discussion whether Football is India’s favourite or Cricket and certainly a debatable topic as to which of these sports is promoted by the Government at large. With Chhetri’s achievements being recognised by FIFA, the aforementioned subjects are once again the topics for discussion. Although Cricket is officially being played in 106 countries, ICC or International Cricket Council recognises only 12 Nations as “Full Members” and the rest as “Associate members”, speaking in the world of Football, about 211 Nations hold full membership, which means nearly every Nation plays Football and holds an official global recognition. This clears out the differences between Cricket and Football. Keeping this in mind, although some of the great Indian cricketers such as Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kolhi, and Rahul Dravid have achieved the highest run-scorer milestone, the contributions and achievements of Sunil Chhetri are astonishing in the world of global sports. One may say it is important to consider the teams against whom Chhetri has scored the goals, but such an evaluation of Chhetri’s achievement is inappropriate and also irrelevant. This is because the highest goals scorer Christiano Ronaldo’s Portugal ranks 9th in the world whereas Messi’s Argentina, ranks 3rd. Chhetri’s Indian Football team however ranks 104th. Being a consistent goal scorer in itself is a remarkable accomplishment; on the other hand, FIFA recognising Chhetri explains it all. Cricketers such as Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Anil Kumble, and Kapil Dev are often called the “Cricketing Legends” of India, but it is time we recognise Sunil Chhetri worthy of being called a “Legend”. It is generally incorrect to compare one with someone else, because the situations, the parameters, the motivation, the goal and several other factors vaguely differ with every individual. Thus, Sunil Chhetri is truly a “Legend”.
Athletic Culture must be inculcated !
From the description so far, it may be clear that the glorification of Cricket is unnecessary and futile. The Cricket business in India is worth thousands of crores. Amongst the member countries of the International Cricket Council or the ICC, the Board of Control for Cricket in India BCCI is the richest; this makes Cricket significantly lucrative in India. Upon that we now have, IPL notoriously termed the “Cash Rich League”. On the other side, Football is completely ignored; the national sports budget allotted for Football was shrunk by 85% for the year 2022-23. This year a sum of a mere five crore was granted for the development of football in India. The unsatisfactory performance of the Indian football team was the justification from the Government of India. To build a stronger India tremendous efforts are put in to align with the idea of “Atma Nirbhar” (self-reliant) Bharat. In addition, owing to the diplomatic handling of current turbulent affairs by our foreign minister S. Jaishankar, India is also getting stronger on the stage of world politics. Since International diplomacy and sports are closely intertwined, India should not sideline football. To chair alongside developed nations like the US, China, Russia, France and Australia, India must promote sports and football to be more specific. This further emphasises the importance of world-class Indian players like Sunil Chhetri. His extraordinary achievements must be inculcated in Indians and this will further strengthen Indian football. It is vital that sports culture is instilled among Indians.
To make India a far superior nation at sports, Government must instill an athletic culture in the nation.
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