Fifa president Sepp Blatter appears to have more faith in India’s sports administration than almost anybody. In an interview last week, he said India should host the 2026 World Cup football tournament. Judging from the derision in the blogosphere (“your [sic] a little early for April Fools” and “only on one condition, all the participating countries have to play bare-footed [sic]”) and the diplomatic caution of Indian team coach Bob Houghton and local football officials, few people share his confidence. The more prosaic explanation for his statement might be that Blatter’s garnering support from emerging countries since he’s thrown his hat in the ring for re-election later this year and is unlikely to get traction from traditional footballing nations.
The timing of Blatter’s statement was certainly ill-judged, since investigating agencies are unearthing depressing evidence of money-making and venality from the Commonwealth Games. There’s also the fact that the country currently ranks 144 in the World Football rankings, “below the likes of Burundi, Sierra Leone and Congo”, an espnstar.com report acerbically noted. The country has not qualified for any World Cup Final since the fifties. This shouldn’t be a problem in 2026. Assuming the rules don’t change, the host nation automatically qualifies for the finals. Qatar, which will host the 2022 World Cup, is ranked 105 and hasn’t qualified for a World Cup Final ever, either. But India’s underwhelming performance at the Asia Cup, for which it qualified after 24 years, was a brutal reminder of the distance it needs to travel in terms of skills and stamina to count among Asia’s best, let alone the world’s.
Still, it might be worth the Indian footballing establishments’ while to take Blatter’s remark more seriously. Hosting a World Cup isn’t a bad ambition to have. It is one of the world’s most watched tournaments and the fan base in India is expanding rapidly (TAM puts it at 83 million, not so far behind cricket’s 122 million). The revenue earning potential is huge: The 2010 edition of the tournament raked in $717 million in ticket sales and $1.6 billion in sponsorships. The spin-offs for tourism and hospitality are huge too. South Africa attracted 3.1 million visitors during the tournament alone, more than half the number of tourists that visit India annually.
Setting aside the Indian team’s performance, hosting a World Cup tournament isn’t really outside the realm of possibility (though 2026 might not be feasible, given Fifa’s norm of rotating the tournament among the continents). India is going to be one of the world’s largest economies by then. That was Blatter’s point. “This is really a double market, not just a market for football but for the economy too. India is a real power,” he told The Telegraph last weekend.
Also, it might be unfair to use the Commonwealth Games as a benchmark of India’s ability to stage global-scale events. That event in no way reflected the execution ability of India’s private sector. Unlike the Commonwealth or Olympic tournaments, global football is driven and bankrolled by private sector money — Russian billionaires, West Asian oil tycoons, Indian poultry barons. This is true in India, where the newer facilities, infrastructure and talent are being financed by companies as disparate as Reliance, Bharat Forge, the UB Group and the Mittals. The aberration is the All India Football Federation which is headed by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel. There is no earthly reason a politician or government functionary should head a football association — they don’t in any successful footballing nation and they pretty much keep out of its administration as well.
As for infrastructure, a 32-team World Cup typically needs about 10 stadiums plus training facilities. India has about 65. Most of them are small, with capacities of 15,000 to 20,000, but there are some that can hold 50,000, the average crowd size in Europe. And there is the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata that can hold 120,000, making it the world’s second-largest football stadium. The biggest stadium in Europe is Barcelona’s Football Club’s Camp Nou, which holds about 98,000.
Obviously, no Indian stadium is anywhere near world class in terms of facilities either, but there is no reason they could not match, if not exceed, those standards by 2026. The big question marks, as always, will be the state of public infrastructure. Or as one earthy writer summed it up, “Nice! there will be free lungi for everyone! Downside is — no bathrooms available in India!”
