Why does India suck at soccer?
Shall we call it the (Asian) elephant in the room?
No, I’m not being harsh.
When a country accounts for one of every six people on the globe yet exhibits incompetence at the most global sport, we need to talk.
As of this writing, among 211 entities ranked by FIFA, India stands at 138.
That’s behind Haiti, Palestine, and…the freaking Faroe Islands.
The country declined an opportunity to play in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, meaning it has participated in the event a grand total of zero times.
And don’t talk to me about poverty—the place has the sixth largest nominal GDP in the world.
In fact, in the 2026 World Cup Edition of Soccernomics, the authors recognized India for being the relatively worst soccer team on the planet. In their exact words:
Our model says that India, given its population, soccer experience, and national income, ought to have had a positive goal difference in the 2010s. But it scored 1.3 goals a game less than it should have. Admittedly that’s not as bad as its neighbor Myanmar, but then Myanmar has the excuse of being stuck in a civil war. India gets our Soccernomics award for the relatively worst soccer team on Earth.
All this leads to one question: Wtf—why does India suck at soccer?
The answers, of course, make sense.
- A national obsession with cricket—infrastructural, financial, and emotional—leaves little oxygen for anything else.
- Grassroots player development is lacking.
- In keeping with the above, infrastructure for player development is lacking.
- Standard Indian corruption has infected the All India Football Federation, resulting in anemic growth of the sport.
- Indian kids would rather study.
But two and a half decades into the 21st century, India is well aware that branding matters.
Look at South Korea—its global prominence has skyrocketed ever since the country forced us to listen to sh*t music, nicknamed K-Pop.
Stated another way, if all it takes to earn a little respect is kicking a damn ball, India is on board.
And there’s hope.
The Indian Super League, the highest level of Indian soccer, began play in 2014 and now boasts 14 teams (though financial viability remains a concern).
In 2017, India hosted the FIFA U-17 World Cup.
Local leagues and pitches are multiplying, at least in large metro areas.
This interest has been fueled in part by television, which regularly broadcasts English Premier League games.
Finally, in the Asian qualifying rounds for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, India fell victim to a horrendous call in Doha against eventual qualifier Qatar.
In other words, decades from now, Why does India suck at soccer? could have the same answer as Why do Rochester and Buffalo suck at life?:
They don’t.
