India must regain lost glory in football, other sports: Rathore

Reminiscing India's gold medal triumph in football at the 1962 Asian Games, Union Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore said on Saturday that the country should work towards lifting football and other sports back to their previous glory.

"A lot of spectators today might not know that we won gold medal in football in Asian Games and the captain of that team was from Bengal. We were once at the 14th position at the Olympics. So These are important moments for us.

"We need to lift the Indian football back up and develop in a lot of other sports," Rathore said here ahead of the the FIFA U-17 World Cup final, with India's 1962 football team captain Chuni Goswami by his side.

Rathore, who himself claimed a silver medal in the double trap shooting event at 2004 Olympic Games, said he was happy with the infrastructure for the U-17 World Cup here and claimed that India needs more players to come up to avail the facilities.

"The infrastructure here is good. I want the facilities to be regularly used by the players. If the infrastructure remain unused then what is the point of maintaining it? Therefore we need more players to come up," he said.

--IANS

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