Can Foreign-Born Players Solve The Mess In Indian Football?

It appears fairly certain now that Ryan Williams, the Australia-born football player who plays for Bengaluru FC in the Indian Super League (ISL), will be playing for India. The 32-year-old whose mother was Indian has played for Australia at the U-20 and U-23 levels, and once even featured in a friendly for the senior team (a 2019 friendly against South Korea). He had relinquished his Australian citizenship to acquire an Indian passport earlier, and FIFA’s Players’ Status Chamber recently approved his change-of-association request, all but clearing the way for him to be picked for the senior Indian men’s football team.

Williams isn’t the only person born and raised abroad who is likely to feature for India soon. It seems certain that Abneet Bharti, an Indian born in Kathmandu and raised in Europe and Africa and who currently plays for a first-division club in Bolivia, will most likely join the Indian team too.

Their eligibility will no doubt boost the team, which has been undergoing a major struggle in recent times. India has found it particularly challenging to find a replacement for Sunil Chhetri and Williams is expected to fill that void as a forward. Bharti, whose footballing chops was forged in Europe’s youth academies and South America’s vibrant footballing scene, will similarly be expected to plug the holes in the team’s defense.

But this development does open up a debate on whether such a reliance on foreign-born players and those of Indian origin will strengthen the team or land up hurting the country’s grassroots development. The All India Football Federation (AIFF) president Kalyan Chaubey seemed quite enthused by this idea of tapping into foreign shores when he spoke about these developments to journalists recently. “We will try to reach out to other regions in the world, especially football-playing nations where Indian passport holders are playing through media and other platforms,” Chaubey said recently. “We would like to invite them to contact us, to make a stronger national team.”

This isn’t the first time a foreign-born OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) or PIO (Person of Indian Origin) took up Indian citizenship to play for India. The Japan-born Arata Izumi, who qualified through his Gujarati father, acquired an Indian citizenship to play for India between 2013 and 2014. He only played nine matches and didn’t create much of a stir, but Williams is expected to have a much bigger impact, given his prowess in ISL.

The footballing scene in India is currently in the doldrums. The ISL season this year is on hold, and the men’s senior team dropped to a new low – 142nd in FIFA rankings – after it lost to Bangladesh recently.

The arrival of Williams and Bharti will boost the squad, and there are many who hail this as a pragmatic development. Many countries do cherry-pick footballers playing in many of the more developed leagues abroad to make their teams stronger. Why should one cling to romantic notions of who belongs and doesn’t when there is such a big crisis for everyone to see. Perhaps an influx of superior foreign-trained players will not just lead to more competitive matches, but also bring in more eyeballs, sponsors, and maybe even inspire newer generations of players?

But of course, there is an inherent danger in this line of thought. You cannot rely on foreign-born talent to sidestep the decades’ long rot in India’s youth pipeline. The arrival of these players will serve at best as a quick fix. They will make the team more competitive and perhaps even win you games. But to really arrest the down-slide, Indian football will need a lot more effort than searching for talent abroad.