标签： Asia

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off last week, one age-old question has resurfaced across Indian football circles, echoing the quiet frustration that fans of the Blue Tigers — India’s men’s national football team — have grown accustomed to over decades of disappointment.

India has never advanced beyond the preliminary qualifying rounds of Asian Zone qualifiers for the World Cup, making the question of when (or if) the country will ever compete on soccer’s biggest global stage one of the most familiar refrains in the nation’s sporting discourse. The bitter irony, though, is impossible to miss: even without a national team competing in the tournament, the World Cup is celebrated with fevered passion across football-mad Indian states including West Bengal, Kerala, and Goa, and a growing cohort of accredited Indian journalists travel to cover the event in person every edition.

“We constantly get asked in the press box whether India even plays football. Most global observers only know us as a cricket nation,” joked a veteran Indian football reporter who has covered four World Cups.

India is not alone in its drought: neighboring China, the world’s second most populous nation, also failed to qualify for this year’s tournament. Still, FIFA has not overlooked the massive untapped market potential of both countries, dispatching a senior media rights delegation to India at the eleventh hour to lock in a live broadcast deal for the 2026 tournament, ensuring the matches reach millions of hungry Indian viewers.

So, is a World Cup berth still an unreachable goal for Indian football? For Baichung Bhutia, former national team captain and one of the most iconic figures in Indian football history, a spot at the World Cup is not impossible — but it cannot be achieved through quick fixes.

“Yes, India can absolutely qualify for the World Cup, nothing is impossible. The expanded 48-team format has increased the Asian quota to eight spots, plus a ninth for Iraq via the inter-confederation play-off this year, and teams like Uzbekistan and Jordan have already taken advantage of that opportunity. But getting there will require massive, consistent hard work,” Bhutia explained.

Bhutia added that the country’s huge population means talent is not the bottleneck. “What we lack is the right development ecosystem. We do not have a serious, long-term focused grassroots football programme. Football is the world’s most popular team sport, and we have to give sustained development time to deliver results,” he said.

Seventy-eight-year-old Shyam Thapa, who helped India claim bronze at the 1970 Asian Games — the nation’s last major continental football success — echoed Bhutia’s call for long-term grassroots investment, stressing that the foundation of success starts with getting more children involved in the sport. The former striker, famous for his iconic bicycle-kick goals, made no effort to hide his frustration with the current status quo, noting that middle and upper-middle-class parents across India increasingly push their children toward cricket rather than football, lured by the prospect of lucrative contracts in the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament.

“I’ve run a youth academy for years, and I can confirm that the more children that play the game, the higher our chances of uncovering elite talent. But what has the All India Football Federation (AIFF) done to build this kind of system from the ground up?” Thapa asked. “Parents need to understand that a professional football career can also be very financially rewarding,” he added.

A closer look at the nine Asian nations that qualified for the 2026 World Cup underscores just how steep the climb is for India. The qualified sides include Australia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, with Jordan and Uzbekistan making their long-awaited World Cup debuts this year. Both debutants sit well above India in the current FIFA global rankings: Uzbekistan at 52nd and Jordan at 63rd, while India has plummeted to 136th after a steep 18-month decline.

These rankings lay bare the scale of the challenge facing Indian football. When Kalyan Chaubey, the first former professional player to take the helm as AIFF president, took office in 2022, he struck a pragmatic tone: “I will not sell fans a dream that India will qualify for the World Cup in eight years. Instead, I promise to move Indian football forward from its current poor state.” Nearly four years later, progress remains elusive, with many critics arguing the AIFF has become a laughingstock over the past three years rather than driving rapid improvement.

The Indian Super League (ISL), the domestic club competition launched in 2014 with massive fanfare and investment from business, Bollywood, and cricket figures, was once hailed as a catalyst for growth. The professionally run league attracted top foreign talent and grew a loyal fanbase, but its future is now deeply uncertain. The most recent ISL season was severely delayed after the AIFF failed to attract any commercial partnership bidders, leaving hundreds of professional players in limbo and sparking widespread public criticism. The federation ultimately was forced to run a shortened season without any commercial sponsors, and is now back to square one planning for the next campaign.

Against this backdrop, Chaubey’s ambitious 2047 Vision — which pledged to bring 35 million children into organised football — increasingly looks like a forgotten campaign promise, with the gap between lofty strategic targets and on-field results growing wider by the year.

A brief bright spot came in 2023, when the senior men’s national team climbed back into FIFA’s top 100 after winning an invitational tournament and the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship. But those hard-won gains have since evaporated. After raising hopes that India would reach the third round of 2026 World Cup Asian qualifiers for the first time in history, the team fell short, and later failed dramatically to qualify for next year’s AFC Asian Cup.

For the near term, consistent qualification for the 24-team AFC Asian Cup is widely seen as the logical immediate priority for Indian football. In an off-the-record conversation with reporters several years ago, former national captain Sunil Chhetri, who came out of retirement in 2025, argued that the national program must set realistic, incremental goals.

“We need to take this one step at a time. Right now, our goal should be to qualify for every AFC Asian Cup, because that will give us regular opportunities to play against stronger, higher-ranked opposition. Once we can establish ourselves among the top 15 to 20 teams in Asia, only then can we start aiming for a World Cup spot,” Chhetri said.

For the moment, the short-term outlook remains gloomy, though AIFF leadership has pushed for a key policy change that could shift the trajectory of the national team: allowing overseas citizens of India (OCI cardholders) to represent India. Currently, players of Indian origin holding foreign passports must renounce their citizenship to play for India, a rule that Australia-born Ryan Williams already followed to impressive effect, delivering strong results after switching his international allegiance.

If the rule change is approved, it could deliver a significant boost to the national team. Notably, four players of Indian origin are competing at this year’s World Cup for other nations: Tahsin Mohammed for Qatar, Nishan Velupillay for Australia, Sarpreet Singh for New Zealand, and Samuel Moutoussamy for Congo.

For now, though, that change remains a distant possibility. Until India qualifies, Indian fans will once again watch the World Cup from the sidelines, cheering on global superstars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and marveling at the achievement of tiny Curaçao, the smallest nation ever to qualify for the tournament. The unavoidable question will linger in the back of every fan’s mind: If Curaçao can do it, why can’t India?

For four decades, Mark J. Terrill has built a legendary career capturing some of sports’ most unforgettable moments, and his work at the 2022 FIFA World Cup offered another example of how innovative camera work can redefine sports photography.

Terrill’s journey in photojournalism began unexpectedly early: at just 16 years old, 44 years ago, he started out as a freelance contributor primarily for the Associated Press. While studying photojournalism in college, he began experimenting with sports photography and remote-triggered camera setups, and quickly developed a lifelong passion for the craft. He went on to join AP as a full-time staff photographer in 1997.

In a breakdown of one of his standout World Cup shots — capturing New Zealand forward Elijah Just scoring against Iran — Terrill explained the creative logic behind the image that sets it apart from typical match photography.

“One of the primary goals (no pun intended) of a photographer is to make a different photograph,” Terrill explained. “Different in the sense that your competition doesn’t have it and that the audience hasn’t seen it before. One of the ways to do this is with remotely triggered cameras. They not only allow you to be in more than one place at a time but it also allows you to be in positions where you can’t physically be.”

The unique vantage point of this shot, which gives viewers a one-of-a-kind overhead look at the goal-mouth action, would have been impossible for Terrill to capture in person from his spot on the pitch sideline. To pull off the shot, he installed a total of four remote cameras along the overhead catwalk of Los Angeles Stadium (now SoFi Stadium), where the match was held: one positioned behind each goal, and another angled toward each goal from the side. Two additional remote cameras were placed behind the goal where Just scored, all synced to radio transceivers that let Terrill trigger the shutters himself from his on-pitch press position.

Terrill noted that the finished image checks every box for a standout soccer photograph. It clearly captures all the key narrative elements of a goal: Just in the act of scoring, the Iran goalkeeper failing to make the save, and defending players reacting to the play in the background. It also benefits from a clean, uncluttered backdrop that keeps the focus firmly on the high-stakes action, rather than distracting from the moment.

This behind-the-scenes look at Terrill’s process offers a rare glimpse into the technical skill and creative planning that goes into capturing iconic sports imagery on the world’s biggest stage.

DALLAS (AP) — An unlikely rise to global fame has earned a little-known New Zealand soccer defender a once-in-a-lifetime career move: 38-year-old Tim Payne, who went from relative obscurity to international social media celebrity in the span of weeks, is set to leave his current club Wellington Phoenix to join Olimpia, the defending Paraguayan top-flight champion and one of South America’s most storied soccer institutions.

The details of the impending transfer were confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday by an insider close to the negotiation process, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Olimpia has not yet scheduled an official public announcement of the signing. The source also declined to disclose the financial terms of Payne’s upcoming contract with the club.

Payne’s explosive leap into the global spotlight traces back to a viral social media campaign launched by Argentine influencer El Scarso. The content creator set out to find the most low-profile player at this year’s FIFA World Cup, settling on Payne due to his tiny pre-tournament social media following. El Scarso called on his own followers to band together to turn the little-known New Zealander into a household name, and the campaign quickly caught fire across platforms.

In the weeks following the campaign’s launch, Payne’s Instagram follower count skyrocketed from just under 5,000 to more than 5.8 million, a more than 1,000-fold increase that captured the attention of clubs across the globe. The outpouring of support for Payne has even spawned an original fan song in Spanish, whose chorus declares devotion to the defender: “I’ve got his back. I cheer him on. I’ve been rooting for him from the beginning. Tim Payne, from cradle to grave. You’re a crack. I cheer you on, every step.” The track also leans into a playful pun on Payne’s name, closing with the line “no Payne, no gain.”

Payne got the chance to show his on-pitch skills to his new global fan base earlier this week, starting in New Zealand’s opening Group G match against Iran that ended in a 2-2 draw on Monday. The All Whites, New Zealand’s men’s national soccer team, are still chasing their first ever World Cup win across three tournament appearances.

Two decades have passed since Tim Cahill etched one of the most recognizable celebrations in Australian soccer history into global memory. During the opening match of the 2006 FIFA World Cup against Japan, Cahill scored a dramatic late equalizer to turn the tide of the game, which ultimately ended in a 3-1 Australian victory. Immediately after the ball hit the back of the net, the forward sprinted to the corner of the pitch and launched into a playful shadow boxing routine against the corner flag. What began as an impulsive moment of joy has grown into a beloved generational tradition for Australian soccer at the World Cup.

Months after Cahill hung up his boots in 2019, another Australian star carried the tradition onto one of the sport’s biggest stages. At the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, during a critical group stage match against Italy, Sam Kerr — then a rising talent making her mark on international soccer — recreated Cahill’s iconic shadow boxing routine to celebrate one of her goals. The moment paid homage to Cahill’s legacy while signaling the continuity of the tradition across Australia’s men’s and women’s national programs.

Kerr would go on to rewrite the Australian soccer record books: in 2022, she surpassed Cahill to become the country’s all-time leading international goalscorer, and she led the national women’s side, the Matildas, to a historic semifinal finish at the 2023 Women’s World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand. Now, the tradition has passed to a new generation of Australian talent, with 20-year-old Nestory Irankunda adding his own name to the lineage.

On Saturday night, Irankunda made history for Australia’s men’s national team, the Socceroos, during their 2-0 upset win over Turkey. The young winger became the youngest goalscorer in Australian World Cup history, and he marked the milestone by paying direct tribute to the man who inspired his soccer journey from childhood. Just like Cahill 20 years earlier, Irankunda sprinted straight to the nearest corner flag after his goal, throwing a rapid series of punches in a perfect recreation of the iconic celebration that first made the routine famous.

Unlike his predecessors, Irankunda has already cultivated his own unique set of trademark goal celebrations, from acrobatic backflips to playful Michael Jackson-inspired dance moves that have become a defining part of his on-pitch persona. Even so, the young star made clear that Cahill has been the biggest influence on his career to date.

“Tim Cahill was my biggest inspiration in Australian football, and I look up to him,” Irankunda told reporters after the match when asked about his decision to replicate the celebration. “I look up to him and I want to be like him one day and I’m really really proud of myself to get the goal.”

Like many young Australian soccer talents, Irankunda launched his professional career domestically, spending three seasons competing in the A-League with Adelaide United before earning a move to European soccer. In 2025, he completed a permanent transfer to English Championship club Watford, where he is continuing to develop his game ahead of future international and club competitions.