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Sunil Chhetri, India’s most prized striker, was offered a 3 year contract by Championship side Queens Park Rangers. There was alleged interest from Leeds United and Celtic also. When it was finally thought that India would have a player among the known clubs in England, the work permit tribunal rejected his plea.

The question I ask myself every morning is why our country has failed to produce 16 top quality players out of a population of 1.3 billion. This failure has made India to look like a joke in front of other European nations who produce a crop of world class players from 1/4th the number of people. The position of the country’s national team is not even respectable. This exactly is the problem that our top players face when trying to migrate to Europe.

The majority of Football Associations demand that the player’s national team should be among the top 70 teams in the world. So, the first criteria fails right there. The second criteria is that the player should have represented his national team in 70-80% of its matches in the last 2 years. Chhetri did not have a problem with that. Even though many players face a problem in this case, it is easy to fight the tribunal and win a work permit arguing a player’s exceptional talent and his ability to increase the quality of the respective league he is moving to. Chhetri’s agent and referances must have fought on this front.

Even though they have not come out with it, it seems the FA did not find 25 year old Chhetri  very likely to shine in England. If you see from their point of view, the decision they made is not a wrong one. When a league has the likes of non-European players like Anderson, the Da Silva twins, Palacios, Valencia, Jo, Song, Adebayor and Drogba amongst them, most of who are younger than Chhetri, his case was bound to be rejected. On the other hand, England already has a massive influx of European players who are absolutely world class.

Sunil Chhetri must have been dealt with a blow, because he had a lot of backing from the buying clubs staff, but even they could not convince the panel. It is said that QPR will still pursue the Indian, but there can be no deal this window, which closes on the 31st. Well, let us keep our fingers crossed and hope to see an Indian shine on one of the biggest stages of football in Europe.