India’s Lost Opportunity: Football World Cup 1950

Brazil has won more Football World Cups than any countries in the world but they were forced to wait for more than six decades to get another chance to host the finals of the ‘most beautiful game in the world’.  Now, it is less than one year to go and preparations are reaching in the final stage and expected everything will be ready by December 2013. Qualifying rounds are still on and the world is sweating to see the list of countries participating in the finals. As hosts Brazil is already there but the defending champion has to qualify through the rounds in Europe. Who will be missing this world cup badly???

The question is quiet absurd at present but I have my own answer and the one and only answer is my own country India. If Indian football lovers know the reason, they will be more disappointed. Yes, India had a golden opportunity to represent Asia and play in the World Cup finals held in Brazil in 1950 and it did not work out in favour of India. As a myth, we all heard that we were qualified to play in the World Cup but FIFA did not allowed Indian team because of their inexperience in playing football with boots. Now, the World Cup is back in Brazil but India is nowhere near to the final qualifying round from Asia.

In 1950, there were few countries who could afford to fly down or sail up to Brazil and participate in the World Cup. FIFA made it clear that two berths were booked for defending champion and the host country. Economic and political conditions of post World War II were not supportive for any big event. Colonialism was continuing and entire Africa was completely missing from FIFA’s list. They were ready to accommodate some participation from Asia and kept two berths for them and approached four countries by invitation.

India was one among that and the others were Burma, Philippines and Indonesia. FIFA expected among these four two will come up through a qualifying round but the later three withdrew from the tournament before qualifying round and India remained as last hope for the representation from Asia. One argument is India was not in a position to afford the financial liabilities of travel and boarding of their team. It was not complete true. FIFA was in a desperate condition and were ready to bear the travel and other expenses of Indian team. For the organisers, it was more important to get representation from the largest continent.

All India Football federation, the apex authority of Indian football that started well before Indian got independence, played a big role in the absence of India from the tournament. They lost a golden opportunity and that opportunity never returned to Indian after that. The withdrawals forced FIFA to keep only two teams in a group for the league round and Uruguay gained maximum out of it. AIFF cited financial difficulties as the reason for the withdrawal of India from the tournament. The later research says that it was not financial difficulties but ‘disagreements over team selection, and insufficient practice time’ were the true reasons.

In fact, AIFF was now aware about the importance of World Cup and they felt that participation in Olympic is more superior thing to do. Sailen Manna, one of the most respected Indian football player who played in 1948 and 1952 Olympics once opened his mind about the lost opportunity of 1950. He accepted that ‘we had no idea about the World Cup then. Had we been better informed, we would have taken initiatives ourselves. For us, the Olympics was everything. There was nothing bigger’ (Cronin, 2011). We can’t blame that generation for lack of information but AIFF failed to correct their ignorance in the later years. If 1950 was an offered opportunity, in the later years, we could have gained a berth by winning qualifying rounds but failed to cross the qualifying round. FIFA increased the number of berths for each continent and increased the number of teams in the finals to 32. Still, to qualify for the 32 is a distant dream for Indian football.

Brazil approached 1950 World Cup with its own way of football romanticism. They prepared to lift the cup in the final in front of more than 200,000 spectators in the famous Maracana stadium. They expected that they are the best football team in the world but the final result was against them. Uruguay, the first winner of World Cup defeated Brazil in front of the biggest crowd ever gathered to watch the final game. Brazil has moved ahead from this tragedy and imposed themselves as the most successful country in the tournament history by winning the cup five times.

Brazil is going to host the World Cup second time in 2014. Brazil might be the fourth country getting second chance to host World Cup finals second time and this time they decided to be realistic and left the romantic approach of 1950s in the mid way. They decided to bring down the capacity of Maracana stadium from 200,000 to 75,000 and brought back Luiz Felipe Scolari, the Cup winning manager of 2002 World Cup edition, to win the cup in their own land.

PS: Football becomes a universal game with more followers than any other sports event. I quote our bureaucrat turned famous short story writer N.S. Madhavan ‘if football is a religion, it will be the biggest religion in the world with maximum number of followers’.