Former Everton player Terry Phelan has always been up for a challenge and when it comes to football, coaching in India appears to be the ultimate test.

Now home to over 1.4 billion people, it overtook China as the most populous country on Earth in 2023, but when it comes to the planet’s most popular sport, India has never once played in the World Cup finals. They did qualify once, for the tournament in Brazil in 1950, their first chance since independence in a competition when England finally made their debut, but that story is a saga itself.

Unlike the Three Lions, who despite boasting a side including the likes of Billy Wright, Tommy Finney, Stan Mortensen and future World Cup-winning manager Alf Ramsey, suffered the infamy of losing to the part-timers of the USA, India never made it to South America. One tale that did the rounds was that they withdrew because their players weren’t allowed to play barefoot, but this wasn’t true.

It was also suggested that they couldn’t afford to pay for the trip, but FIFA were...