For India, World Cup qualification is still just a distant dream

July 28 : As the World Cup reached its final week, Gourav Roy, an Indian software engineer living in San Francisco, drove more than 6,000 miles across the United States to attend both semi-finals and the final.For Roy, it was the next best thing to what he had grown up dreaming of: seeing India play the World Cup.But the possibility of that dream coming true is looking ever more distant as deep-rooted systemic issues and the failure to implement reforms have left the country of 1.45 billion ranked a lowly 138th in the world, failing to even qualify for next year's Asian Cup."I've learned to love without expectation. That's the burden of the Indian football fan," said Roy. While countries with tiny populations like Curacao and Cape Verde qualified for the 2026 World Cup, India remains a pri