November 28 – India plans to use next year’s Commonwealth Games as the launchpad for a bid to host the FIFA World Cup, they announced today.
Suresh Kalmadi, the head of the organising committee for the Commonwealth Games and President of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), claimed that the country will soon have enough world-class stadia to think about bidding and that it would be popular in the country.
Kalmadi’s comments will catch most people by surprise as earlier this week India’s Sports Minister M.S Gill ruled out hosting the Olympic Games – which Delhi had been expected to bid for in 2020 – because he said the country was too poor.
Also the build-up to the Commonwealth Games, the biggest event to be held in India since the 1982 Asian Games, has been marked by doubts over whether the facilities will be built in time and security fears.
The earliest World Cup India could bid for would be 2026 as the bid process is already underway for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.
They may have to wait even longer than that if one of the Asian bidders – Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Qatar or South Korea – is awarded the 2022 World Cup as under FIFA’s unofficial rotation policy a continent cannot host consecutive tournaments.
Football is the country’s second most popular sport in India behind cricket and is played in most schools across the country.
It was Britain who introduced the sport to India and the first recorded game there took place between “Calcutta Club of Civilians” and “The Gentlemen of Barrackpore” in 1854
The Indian Football Association (IFA) was established in Calcutta in 1893, but did not have a single Indian on its board until the 1930s.
The team qualified for the 1950 World Cup finals in Brazil, but could not appear as they still played bare feet at the time.
The team, which is coached by former Bristol City manager Bobby Houghton, is currently ranked 149th in the world.
