Data on the ISL suggests that India has over 100 million football fans. Cricket is much much bigger, but the country has such an enormous population that they ought to be producing some footballers even though it’s a secondary sport. It’s a similar story in China.
The problem is most likely either that the surge in popularity is too recent for kids who got into football to have become top pros yet, or a lack of infrastructure and coaching. The former would be great news for them, but the latter is more likely I think
On the latter, India has actually been improving their domestic leagues pretty well in recent years. Taking a very different approach to China, Saudi etc. and doing it over the long term instead. They’re still a long way behind the best Asian leagues, but have improved significantly from what they once were. If they keep progressing like that the national team should slowly start improving too.
Sports is just not something most parents are interested in in China. I live in a city of about 1.5 million in China, which isn’t big by China standards and at least where I live there aren’t any youth sports programs I’m aware of. They would rather their kids be in some kind of academic setting than training for sports even if that training was for two hours a week.
Cricket is huge in India that’s why football hadn’t licked up much yet. About China, not sure what is holding them back.
Data on the ISL suggests that India has over 100 million football fans. Cricket is much much bigger, but the country has such an enormous population that they ought to be producing some footballers even though it’s a secondary sport. It’s a similar story in China.
The problem is most likely either that the surge in popularity is too recent for kids who got into football to have become top pros yet, or a lack of infrastructure and coaching. The former would be great news for them, but the latter is more likely I think
On the latter, India has actually been improving their domestic leagues pretty well in recent years. Taking a very different approach to China, Saudi etc. and doing it over the long term instead. They’re still a long way behind the best Asian leagues, but have improved significantly from what they once were. If they keep progressing like that the national team should slowly start improving too.
Sports is just not something most parents are interested in in China. I live in a city of about 1.5 million in China, which isn’t big by China standards and at least where I live there aren’t any youth sports programs I’m aware of. They would rather their kids be in some kind of academic setting than training for sports even if that training was for two hours a week.