Ask any professional footballer about the coach who shaped them, and they rarely name the one who coached them at the top. They name the one who coached them first. The person who made them fall in love with the game at seven, eight, nine years old.
Now consider this: in India, that first coach is usually the least qualified, least paid, and least supported person in the entire football pyramid.
The inverted pyramid problem
Football wisdom worldwide says the best coaches should work with the youngest players, because that's where habits - technical, physical, psychological - are formed. Get it right at 8 and everything after is easier. Get it wrong and you spend the next decade un-coaching bad habits and rebuilding lost confidence.
But in practice, the pyramid is inverted everywhere, and sharply so in India. The most experienced coaches gravitate to senior teams where the money and visibility are. Grassroots coaching is left to volunteers, PE teachers doing their best with no football-specific training, and young coaches treating it as a stepping stone to "real" coaching.
I say this with respect for every one of those people - they are holding up Indian football, often unpaid. But effort without education has limits. A passionate coach who only knows the laps-lines-lectures model will deliver laps, lines and lectures, with full sincerity, to children who needed something completely different.
What a great first coach actually does
The job description is widely misunderstood. A great grassroots coach is not a tactician. They are:
A designer of fun. If children don't enjoy the session, nothing else matters - they won't come back. Retention is the first KPI of grassroots coaching.
A creator of touches. Maximum ball contact for every child, every session. No queues, no laps without a ball, no 20-minute lectures.
A protector of confidence. Children quit football because adults made it stressful. The first coach's tone - encouraging brave failures, celebrating attempts - sets a child's relationship with the sport for life.
A communicator with parents. Managing sideline behaviour and aligning expectations is half the job at this level, and nobody trains coaches for it.
The way forward
If you're coaching at the grassroots in India, two things. First - take your work seriously, because it is the most important coaching job in the pyramid, whatever anyone says. Second - invest in your education. AIFF's entry-level coaching courses are more accessible than most people realise, and even self-directed learning (session design, age-appropriate methodology, communication) will put you ahead of the curve.
And if you run a club or academy: pay your grassroots coaches better, train them properly, and stop treating the youngest age groups as the place to park your least experienced staff. The first coach a child meets will do more for Indian football than any marquee signing ever will.