By Jason Davis – WASHINGTON, DC (Sep 12, 2014) US Soccer Players – There’s a consistently trotted-out canard when it comes to the growth and success of soccer in the United States. With a population well over 300 million, the USA should have produced a world-class player through sheer chance by now.
A country with millions of kids playing the game has no excuse for underachieving on the player development front. Never mind the cultural hurdles soccer faces and the importance of infrastructure (including coaching), the logic is too simple to ignore. A big population should beget great players, in much the same way a big population produces a certain number of very tall people.
Of course, it doesn’t remotely work that way. The size of a population, soccer playing or otherwise, is only one small ingredient in the recipe that ends with quality players. The Netherlands and Uruguay are examples of small countries that have “overcome” their lack of numbers to compete with the best in the world. For those nations, longstanding cultural roots and a tradition of coaching more than make up for a smaller pool of potential stars.
At the opposite end of that spectrum are nations like India and China. India is a country of 1.3 billion people, many passionate about sports. Cricket is the most popular game on the subcontinent, but reason says that such a vast population should, at the minimum, produce a handful of soccer players capable of making India a player on the world stage.
Instead, India is largely a soccer wasteland. The country’s national team is 150th in the FIFA World Ranking, sandwiched between Antigua and Barbuda (pop. 91,000) and Malta (pop. 425,000). India has qualified for the Asian Cup just once in the last thirty years (a group stage exit in 2011). The country’s top division, the I-League, is a revamped attempt launched in 2007 at a national competition that draws less than 6,000 fans per game. Financial instability and a lack of professionalism hold back the I-League to such an extent that most Indians ignore it completely.
With so many potential customers for a well-run soccer product, investors can’t keep themselves from imagining the Indian possibilities. In addition to the I-League, India is set to welcome a new soccer competition this fall. Called the “Indian Super League” and modeled on both MLS and the ultra-successful Indian Premier League of cricket, the ISL is a bid to jumpstart interest in domestic soccer through a few high profile shortcuts.
Each of the eight ISL teams will feature a “marquee” name in the mold of Major League Soccer’s Designated Player. As it is India and the competition has zero pedigree, the names attached to the ISL effort are older, semi-retired stars. David Trezeguet will line up for FC Pune City. Fellow Frenchman Robert Pires will play for FC Goa. Former England number one David James will both coach and man the net for Kerala Blasters FC.
For some perspective, the average age of those ex-greats is 40.
The ISL will get top television billing through STAR Sports, a network that is part of the investment in the league. Like their partners, including American sports marketing firm IMG, STAR Sports is betting that India’s soccer fans will gobble up the “improved”, made-for-TV product. With a possible fan base in the eight figures, the wager seems worth the risk.
However, there are questions surrounding the birth of this new, short-format league (the eight teams will play each other home-and-away, for a total of sixteen games over just a few months’ time, with the top four moving on to a playoff), not least of which is whether the ISL will have a positive impact on Indian soccer.
Whatever struggles the I-League faces, it is still at its heart of domestic league meant to help grow the domestic game. ISL rosters must include at least 14 Indian players. There has to be at least some concern the homegrown talent will play secondary status to the imports. In a bid to bolster soccer’s profile within the country, the ISL is pulling in names from outside of India.
Any notion that the ISL might follow in the footsteps of the IPL, a well-funded cricket league that now boasts a total value in the billions of dollars, is specious at best. Cricket is the top sport in India, a culturally embedded game that dominates much of the nation’s attention when the Indian team plays. Bringing a glitzy version of cricket to the Indian masses was almost a no-brainer. There was such an obvious appetite that it seemed ridiculous no one had attempted to elevate cricket in India to that level before.
Perhaps the ISL can make a difference to Indian soccer. In much the same way European and Mexican clubs have mined America’s soccer-playing youth for talent before America was prepared to develop it itself, foreign interests might find a diamond or two worth plucking from the ISL. Where the I-League is easy to ignore for its lack of consistent structure and fully formed clubs, the ISL at least has the benefit of big investment.
If India is ever going to leverage its massive population for soccer ascendancy, it must do a better job of selling the game not as a foreign sport played by foreigners, but as an Indian sport played by Indians. It’s a lesson the United States learned after the implosion of the NASL. It took a concerted and manufactured effort through MLS to bring America even this close to making its own population anything but an irrelevant number when it comes to the business of playing soccer.
Jason Davis is the founder of MatchFitUSA.com and the co-host of The Best Soccer Show. Contact him: matchfitusa@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter:http://twitter.com/davisjsn.
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