Former captain Bhaichung Bhutia speaks on Indian football team's performance issues

Indian Football team have won only one out of last eight matches.

The Indian football team had a relatively underwhelming outing in their matches in the June 2025 window. They lost to Thailand in an international friendly clash, before also suffering a gutting 1-0 loss to Hong Kong in their second AFC Asian Cup 2027 qualifiers as well.

The back-to-back losses has sparked questions on the issues within the Indian football team, who have also failed to score a single goal in their last three competitive matches. It even sparked a press briefing from the All India Football Federation (AIFF) president Kalyan Chaubey, where he pinpointed at the goalscoring issues within the national team and even promised to bring a ‘world class forward’ to help train some young Indian forwards to improve their goalscoring acumen.

Former Indian Football team captain Bhaichung Bhutia has taken a major swipe at Chaubey at their recent comments when speaking about the Indian football team’s recent underwhelming results.

In a press briefing on Friday (June 20, 2025), Bhutia stated: “We all know the recent condition of Indian football and how they have been on the downward slide. The situation is svery unfortunante and we have slipped down to the 133rd spot and are struggling in the Asian Cup qualifiers.

“But I have full faith in the team, it has only been 2 matches, but I trust the players that they can pull this off against Singapore. When we played in AFC Asian Cup in 2011, it was just 16 teams, but now it is 24 teams so India must qualify for the Asian Cup.”

He hit out at Chaubey’s claims that the Indian football team will be among the top-10 ranked AFC teams in the FIFA rankings in 2026 and his claims on the strikers’ issue.

“Our President Kalyan Chuabey had also said that in 2026 we will be in top 10 in Asian and he even introduced the 2047 program. But in three years under Kalyan Chaubey the teams has slipped down and not just men’s team, the women’s team as well, ” Bhaichung Bhutia stated.

“This thing he said about strikers, his plan of bringing the top 10 strikers to address the goal scoring issues how does that make sense? If that was the case then Ronaldo’s son would become the best striker in the world since he has been trained by the best.

“In today’s modern football, we don’t see many strikers. Why are we complaining that India lacks strikers? Even attacking midfielders and wingers are scoring goals these days. It is wrong to say India haven’t produced good strikers and Sunil is a living example to it.”

On Manolo Marquez’s appointment as Indian football team head coach

Interesting, Bhutia, who is a member of the AIFF’s executive committee, also spoke about some claims about how the committee was involved in the appointment of Manolo Marquez as the Indian football team head coach in 2024.

He claimed: “I was there in the technical committee when Manolo was appointed the national team coach. We hardly had any meetings with him and discussed his plans and visions. There should have been a proper discussion regarding his role either as the FC Goa coach or the national team coach.”

“It’s an insult to Manolo Marquez that Subrata Paul will now advise the national team coach. Subrata must be asked to train young goalkeepers and not intervene in Manolo’s job.

I don’t think there should be any issues appointing an Indian as the national team coach. However, the focus must be on bringing the expertise of foreign coaches to train and nurture our grassroot players,” he finished off with.

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