Why no High level Indian players?

I think their is less focus on sports culturally anyway. Contact sports is even less preferred by parents.

Then those who are into sports are more into cricket. Then hockey, wrestling etc.. in traditional sporting states like punjab haryana.

Their are states like Bengal north east where football has been big for a while but then there has been cultural factors and infrastructure factors stopping them.

Anyway in future years there will be lot more expat players though of indian origin like a michael chopra was. That we will see more of like is also happwning in cricket.
 
Anecdotally, from personal experience, in the UK - in school - year 8/9/10/11 - we often did "whites vs blacks", "christians vs muslims", "whites vs immigrants" football games and there were plenty of decent Indian kids then. I feel like they just drop off at some point and stop playing.

For clarification - if you've not grown up in the UK school system the above may sound odd, but it was actually a bonding event, and everyone felt much closer then than we do now. It's actually some of my favorite childhood memories.

 
Probably the biggest reason is kids are pushed into academics and careers.

Slightly off-topic: if you want to see amazing football skills in Asia, look no further than Sepak Takraw. The first time I saw this in Indonesia, I could not believe it.
 
Chipper said:
Not sure that totally disproves genetics. In terms of stamina, power to weight ratio and VO2 max, cycling would be reasonably close to long distance running I would have thought as one of the sports that tests those things the most.

Eritrea borders Ethiopia which has produced fantastic runners. You have Kenya in that general part of the world, the most legendary running country and Somalia too, Mo Farah originally from there. Uganda has had some success as well. It's often thought that genetics plays a role in making people from that region of East Africa so good at long distance running and I think it could translate to cycling pretty well if it's true.
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Gone off on this one with some research. Other than who I'm presuming are comparibly wealthier white guys from South Africa, the same region that seems to do well in longer distance running seems to do well within Africa at cycling. Quite interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Road_Championships

Lots of East African presence plus the North African countries of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Those specific countries from the North have also produced lots of great runners. Slightly more weighted towards middle distance than long distance traditionally compared to East Africa but quite a lot of crossover into the longer distances too. Hicham El Guerrouj, Said Aouita, Mohammed Gammoudi etc.

Not much presence from West African cyclists at all, the same as in the longer distance running events, and these East and North African countries don't tend to produce shorter distance runners at a high level while the West does.
 
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How come America doesn't produce any good cricket players? Is it because of genetics?
 
Chipper said:
Gone off on this one with some research. Other than who I'm presuming are comparibly wealthier white guys from South Africa, the same region that seems to do well in longer distance running seems to do well within Africa at cycling. Quite interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Road_Championships

Lots of East African presence plus the North African countries of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Those specific countries from the North have also produced lots of great runners. Slightly more weighted towards middle distance than long distance traditionally compared to East Africa but quite a lot of crossover into the longer distances too. Hicham El Guerrouj, Said Aouita, Mohammed Gammoudi etc.

Not much presence from West African cyclists at all, the same as in the longer distance running events, and these East and North African countries don't tend to produce shorter distance runners at a high level while the West does.
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It has nothing to do with genetics in different regions. First, genetic research doesn't support this. Second, top sports can't be an indicator of anything medical for a population group, as the sample size is statistically insignificant. It's really very simple.
dharma_eternal said:
How come America doesn't produce any good cricket players? Is it because of genetics?
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Exactly. A country's performance in top sports is mostly cultural.
 
Chipper said:
Gone off on this one with some research. Other than who I'm presuming are comparibly wealthier white guys from South Africa, the same region that seems to do well in longer distance running seems to do well within Africa at cycling. Quite interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Road_Championships

Lots of East African presence plus the North African countries of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Those specific countries from the North have also produced lots of great runners. Slightly more weighted towards middle distance than long distance traditionally compared to East Africa but quite a lot of crossover into the longer distances too. Hicham El Guerrouj, Said Aouita, Mohammed Gammoudi etc.

Not much presence from West African cyclists at all, the same as in the longer distance running events, and these East and North African countries don't tend to produce shorter distance runners at a high level while the West does.
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I'm sure genetics plays some part in it yes. But as you can tell from your own link, there's zero medals for Kenyan, Somalian or Ethiopian cyclists, even though they dominate long distance running. So clearly Eritrea benefits in the first place from its investment in the sport.

So even if Indians on average are slightly less athletic (which may also be down to diet, lifestyle, etc), with some scouting, investment and infrastructure there should be way more talent in such a huge pool of people.
 
rimaldo said:
there to busy coming over here and taking all are jobs if you go to india now its actually a desolit waistland as they all moved to uk and on are benefits its why are darren carnt even get a job at asdas they claim its cos of the gbh convictshion he got for straitenin out a customer at his last job but when i bin there they had a indian woman on checkouts
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here here

said it like it is
 
Cheimoon said:
It has nothing to do with genetics in different regions. First, genetic research doesn't support this. Second, top sports can't be an indicator of anything medical for a population group, as the sample size is statistically insignificant. It's really very simple.

Exactly. A country's performance in top sports is mostly cultural.
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Well, surely genetics plays a small part. If you're taller on average as a population, there's a statistically higher chance you'll produce some decent basketball players.

But of course you can offset this disadvantage by structural investment.
 
I think football is a sport where you need to continuously be challenged at a higher level to improve or you run the risk of getting stagnated. That’s the long and short of it in my opinion. Our leagues are poor and we don’t have any systemic way to have our better talents join European or South American club academies.
 
Botim said:
Well, surely genetics plays a small part. If you're taller on average as a population, there's a statistically higher chance you'll produce some decent basketball players.

But of course you can offset this disadvantage by structural investment.
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Tallness isn't just genetics either though. Over a century ago, the Dutch were among the smallest populations in Europe, now they're the tallest in the world. (And still a nonentity in basketball, for that matter.) That's nutrition first and foremost. The outcome in this case is also related to genetics, but every country has tall people regardless of average height, and again, top sports is a very small group that can't speak for a country's national ability or anything like that.
 
Bestie07 said:
I think football is a sport where you need to continuously be challenged at a higher level to improve or you run the risk of getting stagnated. That’s the long and short of it in my opinion. Our leagues are poor and we don’t have any systemic way to have our better talents join European or South American club academies.
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And same for any other sport. You need people participating, strong competition, and enough money to be able to take things to a professional level (especially with the way all sports disciplines apply sports science now) and to afford participation in international events. Countries that are absent in certain sports virtually always just don't have those foundational elements in place.
 
RedC said:
Maybe we should go to India and take all the jobs that are there because nobody is there? We could have 5 jobs each.
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i carnt becos i hurt my nee at the job centre and waiting to be payed compensayshon for there achshions so i carnt fly there and im going to benidorm as soon as my universal credit is payed
 
Cheimoon said:
It has nothing to do with genetics in different regions. First, genetic research doesn't support this. Second, top sports can't be an indicator of anything medical for a population group, as the sample size is statistically insignificant. It's really very simple.

Exactly. A country's performance in top sports is mostly cultural.
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Honestly, you'll never completely convince me of that.

We know that different body types are suited to different sports more than others. We also know that different body types are more common in some countries or geographical areas than others as a percentage of local population.

That can work withn the framework of culture too. If an area of the world produced a lot of people who had 9 toes on each foot and there was a sport where having 9 toes was advantageous would that not encourage more people from there to try it? It could could cause a feedback loop. Initial success encourages more to try it, it then becomes ingrained in local culture.

Those 9 toed people may have even had ancient sports that used it as an advantage which translates into modern sports and it could have been part of culture going a long way back. 9 toes might have been seen as beautiful from where they are, or perhaps it suited some unusual hunting technique and they were seen as great as they could put food on the table? if you went back long enough the celebration of these 9 toed people could have been cultural for a long time. People then want 9 toed men to father their children or 9 toed women to be the mother of their kids and you end up with more 9 toed people in that area than anywhere else.

I know this is perhaps silly, but I wanted to give an non real world example.

Botim said:
I'm sure genetics plays some part in it yes. But as you can tell from your own link, there's zero medals for Kenyan, Somalian or Ethiopian cyclists, even though they dominate long distance running. So clearly Eritrea benefits in the first place from its investment in the sport.

So even if Indians on average are slightly less athletic (which may also be down to diet, lifestyle, etc), with some scouting, investment and infrastructure there should be way more talent in such a huge pool of people.
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There were some time trial medals from Ethiopia in there, but yes Kenya very conspicuous by their absence.

Absolutely agree when it comes to money and culture, I think it's multi-factoral and that would apply to India and football.

If genetics is at play, I think football is arguably one of the sports where it least matters anyway. There's room within football for a larger variation of body types than in some other sports.
 
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TsuWave said:
Anecdotally, from personal experience, in the UK - in school - year 8/9/10/11 - we often did "whites vs blacks", "christians vs muslims", "whites vs immigrants" football games and there were plenty of decent Indian kids then. I feel like they just drop off at some point and stop playing.

For clarification - if you've not grown up in the UK school system the above may sound odd, but it was actually a bonding event, and everyone felt much closer then than we do now. It's actually some of my favorite childhood memories.

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Where on earth did you go to school? And when?
 
Lynty said:
Most of us don’t know enough about India (or other Asian countries) to really say, other than blame Cricket. Physicality aspect is nonsense.

Most of us can speak first hand on why there aren’t as man British Asians in the game though. I grew up in Birmingham, so basically an expert…

I was kicking a ball at 4 or 5.

All my Indian, Pakistani or Bengali friends didn’t really start to get interested in football until 9 or 10 and they were at a disadvantage.

Think about how many 50-60year old Asian men really follow football compared to Caribbean or African men of the same age group.

The love the game at an early age is often passed on from parents. Unfortunately Asians are a generation or two behind, so you’ll start seeing more talent coming from the British Asian pool from now…the first generation of children born from football loving British Asians.

That being said, my dad was a child from the Windrush generation. His dad and uncles wasn’t interested in football (preferred cricket). But they settled into a white dominated area and in general the black community did integrate more easily than lets say Bengali/Pakistani community, who perhaps keep social activities within their own community in my experience (maybe more to do with shared faith).

All my dad friends growing up were white and he shared their hobbies/interests and quickly got into football.

I have Gujirati/punjabi friends now who are more into football than me and you can see that passed onto their kids. Perhaps not so much Pakistani/Bengali though.

TLDR: the love for the game has to come from somewhere
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I hope this changes then.

At grassroots football today, I see a lot of Asian parents (including Pakistanis) bringing their kids to training. If I pop down to my local Goals on a Saturday morning, you'll loads of different U8-U12 teams having their training sessions there and it's a melting pot of white, black and Asian parents standing and watching.

So anecdotally, your theory about the latest generation of British Asian parents being way more inclined to support their child through the grassroots football structure and into academies seems to ring true.

My generation are parents now and all my Asian mates would love to see their kids play for United or Chelsea one day.
 
Chipper said:
Honestly, you'll never completely convince me of that.

We know that different body types are suited to different sports more than others. We also know that different body types are more common in some countries or geographical areas than others as a percentage of local population.

That can work withn the framework of culture too. If an area of the world produced a lot of people who had 9 toes on each foot and there was a sport where having 9 toes was advantageous would that not encourage more people to try it? It could could cause a feedback loop. Initial success encourages more to try it, it then becomes ingrained in culture.

Those 9 toed people may have even had ancient sports that used it as an advantage which translates into modern sports and it could have been part of culture going a long way back. 9 toes might have been seen as beautiful from where they are, or perhaps it suited some unusual hunting technique and they were seen as great as they could put food on the table? if you went back long enough the celebration of these 9 toed people could have been cultural for a long time. People then want 9 toed men to father their children or 9 toed women to me the mother of their kids and you end up with more 9 toed people in that area than anywhere else.

I know this is perhaps silly, but I wanted to give an non real world example.
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Yes, but in general, the world isn't a level playing field where genetics can work out that way. I already made the nutrition point above, and there is no evidence that Kenyan and Ethiopians have a higher innate ability for running. (I don't have a book with the evidence on hand now, but could go back later.) So as it is, cultural interest, the sports environment, and stuff like nutrition play a larger role in numbers (I'm not calling them statistics) like how many medals countries win at the Olympics or at world cups.
 
TsuWave said:
Anecdotally, from personal experience, in the UK - in school - year 8/9/10/11 - we often did "whites vs blacks", "christians vs muslims", "whites vs immigrants" football games and there were plenty of decent Indian kids then. I feel like they just drop off at some point and stop playing.

For clarification - if you've not grown up in the UK school system the above may sound odd, but it was actually a bonding event, and everyone felt much closer then than we do now. It's actually some of my favorite childhood memories.

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Forgot all about this, can confirm this was also our school breaktimes in Manchester in the mid to late 90s. In the winter there were epic snowball fights with the same team make up. The dinner ladies used to cheer us all on and everything.
 
I’ve seen people suggest it’s a cultural thing, that parents would rather their child aims for something more achievable like having their own business or even something in medicine
 
There's enough Indian kids in England that have the infrastructure to perform. But like I said previously, they drop out even when talented in their teens.

I'm British Indian myself and my son is half Indian and he's managed to get into a pretty good football academy. Unfortunately despite being in an area with a lot of Asians, he's only one of two kids of Asian origin in his age group.
 
Gregawa said:
Where on earth did you go to school? And when?
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I went to school in South London and at Manchester Academy and we had those games at both. My nephew goes to Trinity in Hulme - same thing.

Again it’s not insidious, “Somalis vs [insert here]” was another one. Kids have these games throughout. As evidenced by the thousands of testimonies in the thread I linked.
 
TsuWave said:
Anecdotally, from personal experience, in the UK - in school - year 8/9/10/11 - we often did "whites vs blacks", "christians vs muslims", "whites vs immigrants" football games and there were plenty of decent Indian kids then. I feel like they just drop off at some point and stop playing.

For clarification - if you've not grown up in the UK school system the above may sound odd, but it was actually a bonding event, and everyone felt much closer then than we do now. It's actually some of my favorite childhood memories.

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Blacks v whites :D I remember

Absolute peak football heritage for working class areas. We've had so many epic games and not an ounce of racism in sight.

Like you said, it was a bonding experience.
 
rimaldo said:
i carnt becos i hurt my nee at the job centre and waiting to be payed compensayshon for there achshions so i carnt fly there and im going to benidorm as soon as my universal credit is payed
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You know they do curries in India?
 
Gregawa said:
Where on earth did you go to school? And when?
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Was the same for me. Whites v blacks v Pakistanis. Unfortunately the Pakistani's didn't want me due to being Indian so I was picked for the black team :lol:
 
TsuWave said:
I went to school in South London and at Manchester Academy and we had those games at both. My nephew goes to Trinity in Hulme - same thing.

Again it’s not insidious, “Somalis vs [insert here]” was another one. Kids have these games throughout. As evidenced by the thousands of testimonies in the thread I linked.
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You're spot on. That's exactly how it was.

In my school it was usually Caribbeans and Somalis vs White and Asians. It would get fecking competitive and kids who didn't even play football used to hurry out of the lunch hall to watch the games. Good times man :lol:
 
TsuWave said:
I went to school in South London and at Manchester Academy and we had those games at both. My nephew goes to Trinity in Hulme - same thing.

Again it’s not insidious, “Somalis vs [insert here]” was another one. Kids have these games throughout. As evidenced by the thousands of testimonies in the thread I linked.
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Yeah I went to school in Prestwich then in Essex and whites vs blacks was like El Classico at lunch.
 
TsuWave said:
Anecdotally, from personal experience, in the UK - in school - year 8/9/10/11 - we often did "whites vs blacks", "christians vs muslims", "whites vs immigrants" football games and there were plenty of decent Indian kids then. I feel like they just drop off at some point and stop playing.

For clarification - if you've not grown up in the UK school system the above may sound odd, but it was actually a bonding event, and everyone felt much closer then than we do now. It's actually some of my favorite childhood memories.

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went to school in early 90s, we never had games like that. Wouldnt even occur to us, we were kids and all just wanted to play football.

interested in what time period these games appeared?
 
dinostar77 said:
went to school in early 90s, we never had games like that. Wouldnt even occur to us, we were kids and all just wanted to play football.

interested in what time period these games appeared?
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Agree. Never happened at my school and certainly doesn’t happen at my kids school now.
 
dinostar77 said:
went to school in early 90s, we never had games like that. Wouldnt even occur to us, we were kids and all just wanted to play football.

interested in what time period these games appeared?
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2002-2007 for me

Certainly was a thing for years after that as well. Likely still is.

What area were you raised?
 
elmo said:
Because takes years and millions of dollars to revamp youth infrastructure to give youths the best chance to become a football professional. The government isn’t that interested in funding this when they’ve bigger things to work on.
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This is bollocks. Tonnes of top class African players learnt on a dust pitch with sticks for goals
 
Cheimoon said:
Tallness isn't just genetics either though. Over a century ago, the Dutch were among the smallest populations in Europe, now they're the tallest in the world. (And still a nonentity in basketball, for that matter.) That's nutrition first and foremost. The outcome in this case is also related to genetics, but every country has tall people regardless of average height, and again, top sports is a very small group that can't speak for a country's national ability or anything like that.
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No, it's not just genetics, but it does play a part. I was just in Guatemala. The men of Mayan descent there are 154 cm on average. A different diet may up that number, but they'll never make up the 30cm difference with some European countries.

Anyway, I think we agree on the main point, that it's just a negligeable factor that can be overcome with proper infrastructure.
 
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