Will India's football team ever qualify for the World Cup ?

As people pour out their love for Spain all over Facebook in Mumbai today, there's a soccer story closer to home that it's time to pay attention to. A story some feel should have made front page news and let Katrina Kaif have a day off. But it didn't.  

Monty Munford reports for the Telegraph that on the eve of the FIFA World Cup last month, Mumbai's Mahindra United Football club (MUFC), "generally considered the best-run team in the [Indian] league", were disbanded. After 48 years, "nobody turned up to watch their matches and the club leaked money faster than a roof in the monsoon."

This is because, of course, cricket dominates. "Even in Goa, whose two major teams finished first and second in the I-League, the goalposts of every football pitch in the state are literally moved to create makeshift cricket squares every summer," reports Munford.

But there are other problems, he points out. Such as a failing federation ("The All Indian Football Federation (AIFF) is widely derided as an organisation that resembles other Indian sporting gerontocracies where sinecures are more highly valued than positive changes to sport’s infrastructure") and marketing campaigns without substance (read, Panasonic's commercial featuring Indian football stars, Bollywood actors and Indian cricketers.") 

In Mumbai, encouragingly, the art world was the first to protest. For the duration of the World Cup, artist Riyas Komu and gallerist Abhay Maskara held a football-themed exhibition "Subrato to Cesar" at Gallery Maskara which critiqued the sorry state of the game in India. Opening night drew a crowd, yet few recognized the captain of the national football team sitting quietly on a bench in the middle of the room.

India is FIFA's 132nd ranked team in the world and judging by all the support they get, Munford is quite sure, "they haven’t got a chance of qualifying for the World Cup in my lifetime."