More than the goal, Ryan Williams provided something to India that decades of grassroot football has not been able to — composure in the midfield.
A left-winger for his club Bengaluru FC, Williams — on his debut for India after giving up his Australian passport and becoming the first naturalised player to play for the national team since Japan’s Arata Izumi more than a decade ago — scored within three minutes in Kochi. But in a 66-minute appearance that ended with him clutching his thigh and being taken out of the game, the 32-year-old had ensured that his adopted country had played its best football in the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers.
In their five games before the one in Kochi, India did what India usually does. Select players, put them in positions that didn’t match their profile, and then expected the chaos of Indian grassroot, and then club football, to somehow miraculously disappear as soon as the national anthems were done. Ranked the best in a group of Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangladesh, the national team predictably combusted, picking up a pitiful two points in five games. And then came Williams and a Hong Kong tie when all mathematical possibilities to reach the 2027 AFC Asian Cup had been dead and buried. The 2-1 win over Hong Kong was inconsequential for India yet Williams gave home fans reason to cheer.
INDIA, MEET YOUR NEW NO.10 😍
RYAN WILLIAMS 🇮🇳 🔥
Watch India vs Hong Kong LIVE on FanCode 👇https://t.co/a8MNrgbN5V#INDHKG pic.twitter.com/wDFoiPK29X
— FanCode (@FanCode) March 31, 2026
He scored within three minutes but the buildup was the real winner. India, deep within their own half, passed their way out of Hong Kong’s forward line overloading at the top, and then crucially, found the pass that would start a 2 vs 3 race to burst into the box. Manvir Singh found the pass, and Williams discovered his first-ever goal for India.
But it was what happened after the goal that truly put a torchlight on why he’s needed and where India’s grassroot football has woefully failed.
Within the first few minutes of that opening goal, Indian players started to pass the ball into the midfield – with Williams’ back to the Hong Kong goal. Usually, that midfield route lies under construction in Indian football. But Williams held off an onrushing body, deftly dropped his right shoulder to shield the ball and move sideways, allowing a rare buildup from the centre of the park. It was the calm with which he handled situations, where, despite being surrounded by players, he found the time and space to hold onto precious possession. He brought energy into the midfield – similar to his compatriots – but it was just the sheer difference in basic technical knowledge that differentiated him from the rest, and elevated a team that, for years, has had to work with whatever the system from below has thrown at them.
AKASH MISHRA WITH THE STUNNING FINISH 🥵
Watch India vs Hong Kong LIVE on FanCode 👇https://t.co/a8MNrgbN5V#INDHKG pic.twitter.com/ceH8Z8UVlR
— FanCode (@FanCode) March 31, 2026
While appreciated, Williams’s control in the midfield was an admission of failure. It took a player born and brought up in Australia’s football pyramid, with an Anglo-Indian mother from Mumbai and a grandfather who played in the Santosh Trophy, to show in a ‘homecoming’ of sorts just how far the sport has fallen in the country.
India won 2-1 on Tuesday and finished dead last in their group. Williams will be 37 when the 2031 AFC Asian Cup, the next time India can be part of the continental tournament, chugs along. A country known to outsource its talent, now benefits from the reverse. That inability to create its own is where the real story lies.
