Why China and India don't play football well. Analysis
The FIFA World Cup, which has reached the semi-final stage, has expanded its membership to 48 teams this year. However, this did not help the national teams of India and China to get to the tournament, despite the fact that they are leaders in terms of population and have powerful economies. Why the level of football in both countries is extremely low, despite the opportunities for its development, is in the Izvestia article.
World Cup without the most populated countries
• The 2026 FIFA World Cup brought together 48 national teams for the first time, increasing their number by 16 compared to the previous time. In addition to the fact that the strongest teams on the planet performed there (Italy was the only one out of the top 20 in the world ranking), the audience also saw a scattering of dissimilar countries that differ in a variety of parameters, from population to GDP.
• For example, the Curaçao national team broke the World Cup record for the smallest population — only 155 thousand people live on the island, but it managed to qualify for its debut World Cup and even score one point in the group stage for a draw with Ecuador. Curacao has also become the smallest entity in terms of area, performing among the best football teams. Countries that are at different poles in terms of well-being also competed at the World Cup. So, together with the USA, Germany and Japan, Haiti, Senegal and Cape Verde shared the same fields.
• All these countries are united only by the fact that in each country the level of football is at a sufficient level to be able to compete at the World Cup. At the same time, India and China, two global superpowers with huge populations and unlimited economic opportunities, invariably fail in the most popular game in the world and repeatedly miss the main football tournament, which greatly surprises fans from all over the world.
• China managed to compete at the World Cup only once, in 2002, when the strong teams Japan and South Korea were exempt from selection, and Australia had not yet qualified within Asia. Then the Chinese suffered three defeats in a row, did not score a single goal and conceded a total of nine against Brazil, Turkey and Costa Rica. China has never won the Asian Championship, reaching the finals only twice in 1984 and 2004.
• India has an even worse football history. She only managed to qualify for the World Championships in 1950, and this happened only because all the other participants in the qualification refused to perform. At the same time, India itself also withdrew from the tournament due to high travel costs to Brazil, problems with attracting football players and lack of playing practice. At the Asian Championships, India finished second in 1964, but in all subsequent tournaments it was able to win only one match against Thailand.
China's Problems
• China boasts about how it manages to use its strengths to achieve success in sports. Since 2000, its athletes have been among the top three in the medal standings of the summer Olympics, and at the winter Olympics they periodically bypass many northern states. The country has a centralized approach to the development of sports infrastructure and technology development, there is a strict system for selecting athletes and planning their training activities, allowing them to achieve high results. This is evident in sports such as table tennis and diving, where China has been out of competition for decades.
However, such a system fails in game sports, where it is not the physical parameters of an individual athlete that are important, but completely different qualities: interaction within the team, creativity, initiative and spontaneity. In such disciplines, China won only three gold medals at the Olympics (all in women's volleyball), and 327 in all others. It is easier for Chinese coaches to train champions in highly competitive athletics and swimming than in much less popular and niche water polo and handball.
• Betting on personal sports pays off at the Olympic Games, where you can win a lot of medals this way. Team sports do not provide such results, and efforts to create a strong national team are much higher. Usually, success in football is achieved in countries where an extensive system of training athletes of different ages has been created, there are traditions and football history, and entire communities of fans and fans are involved in the game. To build this, we need an initiative from below and whole decades until the first high-class football players appear. In China, it is customary to control sports at the state level and achieve quick results.
• China as a whole does not have a street sports culture that would bring millions of children to the sport for further education of football players. In 2026, the Chinese Football Association reported that 109,000 young soccer players, including boys and girls, were registered in the country. For a country with a population of one and a half billion, this is extremely small to expect to create a World Cup-level national team. However, in 2015, when the country adopted the football development plan until 2050, there were only 40 thousand young players.
• The fact that young people in China show little interest in football is also influenced by the attitude towards education. Parents demand high academic performance from their children, which will allow them to get a good education and a prestigious job. Sports games are perceived as a factor that only distracts from studying and can also lead to unnecessary injuries, which is especially critical for families with one child. The exception is individual sports, where you can achieve personal success and not depend on who your teammate turns out to be.
• Football in China is not perceived as a social elevator, as it is in Latin American countries, and its prestige in the eyes of the younger generation is only decreasing. At the same time, the fewer children involved in the game, the less likely it is that football will allow them to succeed in life, and because of this, even more children leave it. The remaining players do not reach the level required for global competition, are not in demand in the strongest clubs in the world and play at home.
• Large investments, high-quality infrastructure and weather conditions have at least allowed China to create a strong professional championship by Asian standards, which attracts foreign players and coaches. However, match-fixing scandals periodically occur in it, clubs are entirely dependent on financial injections from sponsors and do not earn on their own, and the state controls salaries and the limit on foreign players. The factor of a strong league, which gives some countries the opportunity to have a good national team, also does not work in the case of China.
India's Problems
• India, on the other hand, has a completely different set of problems that prevent it from selecting a couple dozen athletes from its gigantic population to play football. First of all, this is due to the extremely low level of management. Fans, players and coaches relentlessly criticize the All India Football Federation for internal conflicts, financial fraud and indifference to their own sport.
• Because of this, incidents occur in India that are unthinkable for countries wishing to achieve success in football. For example, the last national championship was disrupted due to a conflict between the federation and the leadership of the major league. The tournament, which was supposed to start in September 2025, eventually began only in February 2026 and was held in a truncated format of 91 matches (380 games are held in the championships of England and Spain). At the end of the season, the Indian national team was supposed to compete in a friendly tournament in London, but a new dispute between the federation and the Mohun Bagan Super Giant club led to seven players leaving the national team right before the flight.
• Unlike China, India does not even attempt to create a centralized training system for football players. However, this is not due to the lack of funds or the desire of the authorities. Football is not able to compete with cricket, where India is one of the leading powers in the world. This sport has everything that other countries could dream of: huge competition among players, spacious stadiums, attention from fans and the media, and high results. Parents who want a happy future for their child would rather buy him a cricket bat than a soccer ball.
• There would be enough youth in India to develop several team sports in parallel. However, this still does not affect the level of football, as India is poorly involved in the global training system. There are scouts in Europe, Latin America and Africa who are looking for talented players for their clubs in different countries. In the future, players who have thus received a chance to open up at a professional level will strengthen their national team, even if their country did not have sufficient conditions for development. The attention of scouts usually does not extend to Asia, and China and India in particular, due to their remoteness from the main football regions. It will be easier for any scout to find a future star in a small European country than to select her from thousands of Indian boys.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
