India national football team
men's national association football team representing India
The India national football team represents India in international football and is governed by the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and is under the global jurisdiction of FIFA. It is governed in Asia by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and in South Asia by South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) — both of which were co-founded by the AIFF.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, under the coaching of Syed Abdul Rahim, India won the gold medal at the 1951 and 1962 Asian Games while finishing fourth at the 1956 Summer Olympics. India has never participated in the FIFA World Cup, although they did qualify by default for the 1950 World Cup after all other nations in their qualification group withdrew. However, India withdrew prior to the beginning of the tournament. The team has also appeared five times in the AFC Asian Cup, Asia's top football championship and finished as runners-up in 1964. India also participates in the SAFF Championship, the top regional football competition in South Asia. They have won the tournament record eight times since its inception in 1993.
In the 21st century, besides the SAFF Championship triumphs, under the guidance of Bob Houghton, India won the Nehru Cup in 2007, 2009 and the 2008 AFC Challenge Cup. The Challenge Cup victory allowed India to once again qualify for the Asian Cup after 27 years from 1984.
History
Early days (1930s–1940s)
The first foreign tour by the Indian football team was to Ceylon in 1933. India beat Ceylon 1–0 in first match of the tour.
The public source identifies “India national football team” as men's national association football team representing India. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around India, national and football.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q212206. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1962, 1956 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “India national football team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.