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Of late, Coaches have occupied much space in the sports section of most dailies in India. First it was Cricket, which saw a new coach and then Football took over. Frequent appointing and discarding coaches is nothing new to Indian sports. But the fact remains that nothing good comes out of the exercise. This has more relevance to football than to the other games.

We had Mr.Stephen Constantine who had a longer stint with the Indian team.He could bring in some improvement in the way India played most prominent being the victory of the LG Cup in Vietnam. Thereafter the performance was back to square one after losing to Bangladesh. Then came Sukhvinder Singh. The AIFF very well knew his capability as he was not taking charge of the Indian team for the first time. Two disastrous tours to Pakistan and Fiji led to the sacking of Sukhvinder, too. Now we have Mr Syed Nayeemudin in the hot seat. Expectations are high especially with the coming Asian Games, next year.

Can Syed Nayeemudin deliver ? I don't doubt the ability of the coach under whom I trained on two different occasions for the selection of the India team in the eighties. Coaches, they say are as good as the players. So should I direct the question to the players ? Can the present players deliver ? I doubt. We should not expect the unexpected from the present lot. I say unexpected because we have failed to change the way we play at the grass root level.

Goa had six teams in the last NFL and I can confidently say that the Goa Professional league is one of the best in Indian Football. I have seen the entire first leg of the GPL, 2005 and sadly I must say that we have not progressed at all in the last twenty years. Yes, twenty years ago when I played for Salgaocar-Tata-Dempo SC we played as well, if not better, than the football being exhibited, now. So, where is the progress?
And if there is no progress in Football crazy states like Goa and Bengal, how can we expect anything from the present bunch of players, internationally? I am not being pessimistic but just being practical. We were Asian champions once but now other Asian countries have advanced but we have not.

To succeed in any game we must go to the grass root level. If we don't improve our school football, we go nowhere. The professional clubs in Europe have their own Academies for youth development. Ryan Giggs, David Bechkam are the products of the Manchester United Academy. They start very early, around eight, abroad but in India we have very few academies like Tata Football Academy and Sesa Goa Football Academy in Goa where footballers are trained around when they are fourteen. Isn't this too late? Could this be the reason why despite having these reputed Academies, we have not done well, internationally? I have also seen school football, 2005 in Goa and what we see is very discouraging. The youngsters today are weak both, physically and technically. School standard has gone done in Goa and it's a pity that nothing much is being done to raise the standard. If we don't provide qualified coaches for the eight-year-old youngsters then we must be content by just playing amateur football at a later stage and not call our football, ‘Professional'. Besides good coaches, we need to look after the diet of the talented youngsters who play football. This is the right time to look after their feed so that they grow strong and healthy. To see any positive results we need to invest a lot on the youngsters as most of them who play football come from average-income families. Well to do families prefer Cricket and that's a fact nobody will deny.

For this reason, I am of the strong opinion that the NFL based clubs must adopt schools, promoting football. Fielding an under-19 team under compulsion is not youth development. They need to go further done to train our youth. They have the money as well as the expertise. Retiring players in the club could be gainfully trained and employed by the Clubs to train the youngsters. In India, unfortunately, we have professional football starting at the top with nothing to depend on, at the bottom. We are ready to spend around forty lakhs on a foreign coach or player but not ready to spend even 10 % of what is spent on one player for the benefit of our youth.

If we start now, we can expect a lot from the Indian Football team in the 2018 Asian Games. It's now or never. It's better late than never. We need to change our approach towards this great game of Football.