The question has been asked repeatedly since Lionel Messi’s visit to India: how can ₹150 crore be mobilised to bring a global icon for a few days, while Indian football continues to struggle for funding, structure and belief?
It sounds like an obvious indictment of priorities. But it is also an incomplete question. The harder, and more uncomfortable, one sits beneath it: what has Indian football done over the last five decades to earn that kind of emotional, financial or aspirational investment?
Because money in sport does not move on morality alone. It moves on trust, credibility and belief.
Despite decades of underachievement, Indian football fans have not walked away. They still show up. They still watch. They still hope. They still support. That is not neglect. That is loyalty far beyond performance. And it is precisely this loyalty that often gets misunderstood in moments like the Messi tour.
Celebration is not abandonment
Indian fans did not “abandon” Indian football for Messi. What they did was vent decades of stored love for the sport on a global icon who represents something Indian football has struggled to offer consistently: excellence, continuity and belief. Messi is not just a footballer; he is a symbol of a system that works where talent is nurtured, competition is relentless, and greatness is sustained.
That emotional outpouring is not betrayal. It is emotional overflow.
So when an Indian fan celebrates Messi, why does the discourse immediately turn accusatory?
Why is the fan asked to justify joy, as though celebration subtracts from domestic loyalty? It doesn’t. Celebration is not subtraction. Fans are capable of holding admiration for global greatness and hope for Indian football at the same time.
The illusion of moral superiority
The loudest criticism that followed the tour was familiar: “Couldn’t this money have been used for Indian football instead?” It is a powerful line emotionally satisfying, morally superior, and analytically weak.
Because if this was truly about Indian football, the obvious follow-up is unavoidable: why didn’t Indian football do it? If Messi’s commercial pull was so self-evident, what stopped the All India Football Federation or domestic institutions from organising something similar, raising the capital, or partnering with private enterprise to channel profits back into the system?
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They represent the sport. They have decades of legitimacy at least on paper. So what stopped them? Capability? Risk appetite? Commercial imagination?
And extending the logic further, what stopped the loudest critics from organizing the tour themselves, raising the money, bringing Messi, and donating the profits to grassroots football? Because intent without execution is not morality; it is commentary.
Don’t punish success because failure feels familiar
There is a deeper discomfort at play here: why does profit suddenly become a dirty word in sport? If a private enterprise has the capability to organise a global sporting spectacle and make money from it, that is not exploitation. That is enterprise. The market has already delivered its verdict. Engagement was massive. Attention was unprecedented. Emotion was raw and real. People did not care, in that moment, where the money was going. They cared that Messi was here. Moral outrage arrived later mostly on social media.
Blaming private enterprise for succeeding where institutions have repeatedly failed is an easy shortcut. Moralising money only after it has been made is convenient. Weaponising Indian football’s struggles every time a global icon arrives is lazy.
The real deficit: trust and credibility
If Indian football wants ₹150 crore-level attention, the pathway is not guilt. It is trust.
Trust is built when competitions are credible. When calendars are stable. When governance inspires confidence rather than fatigue. When fans believe that progress, however slow, is real. Over the last 50 years, Indian football has offered moments of promise but rarely continuity. A qualification here, a win there but never a sustained narrative that tells fans something big is coming.
And yet, fans have stayed. That loyalty is Indian football’s greatest asset and also its most exploited one. Fans keep hoping without being given enough reason to believe. At some point, emotional investment follows credibility elsewhere. That is not betrayal. That is human.
What the Messi moment really exposed
The Messi visit did not expose Indian football’s irrelevance. It exposed its fragility. It highlighted the gap between what global football represents and what Indian football has struggled to deliver: systems that outlast individuals, institutions that inspire confidence, and pathways that convert inspiration into participation.
The lesson is not that India should stop celebrating greatness. The lesson is that Indian football must earn it—not demand it. Don’t blame fans for choosing excellence when it appears. Don’t blame private capital for flowing toward certainty rather than hope. And don’t turn every global visit into a referendum on domestic failure.
Until then, let people celebrate
If Indian football wants that kind of money, attention and emotion, the roadmap is brutally simple: earn trust, deliver hope, build belief. That takes time, competence and humility far more than it takes outrage.
Until that work is done, let people celebrate greatness when it shows up. Because fandom is emotional, not ideological. And no amount of moral policing will turn disappointment into belief.
₹150 crore for Messi is not the problem.
The absence of a system that can inspire the same confidence at home is.
