Rarely has a legitimate story gone haywire in such a ridiculously funny fashion as in the case of AIFF and Spanish great Xavi Hernandez. The prank? An email prank, allegedly sent by a teenager, which tricked the Indian football governing body into thinking that Xavi had agreed to visit India.
The incident gained public attention after viral media reports suggested that a 19-year-old kid who posed to be Xavi’s manager emailed AIFF with fake correspondence from “Xavi.” This correspondence supposedly indicated that Xavi had accepted an invitation to Arunachal Pradesh to attend the Santosh Trophy final sometime earlier this year.
The national team director Subrata Paul even told TOI that the Barcelona legend had submitted his application for the position of head coach of the Indian football team, which was purportedly the subject of the email. The purportedly fraudulent hoax email to AIFF is now seen in a video that has been uploaded on X.
It wasn’t Xavi who applied to coach India. It was a 19-year-old who used a fake email ID. I spoke to him and he showed me a screen recording from his Sent folder. Yes, this might’ve been the email AIFF thought came from Xavi.
Indian football deserves better.#IndianFootball #Xavi pic.twitter.com/MVJu6w4l1L— Naman Suri (@Namansuri03) July 25, 2025
A TOI article claims that Paul stated, “Yes, Xavi’s name was there.” The AIFF received the application via email. The AIFF turned down Xavi’s application because they couldn’t afford him, according to the TOI story.
The AIFF ostensibly considered it, going so far as to announce Xavi’s expected presence. Fans of Indian football were suddenly excited; the AIFF had made statements publicly announcing the visit. As the dates drew nearer, fans began to wonder about the legitimacy. Following the end of the event without signs of the former Barcelona midfielder, speculation ran rife that the AIFF had been taken for a serious ride.
A fresh video making the rounds online shows the teenager bragging about having done what he did with a Gmail account and a fake look-at-me-I-am-official-style football correspondence. While some found the incident funny initially, the serious implications are what lie beneath.
Now, this incident raises serious questions about digital verification mechanisms employed by bigger organizations. For a national sports federation to have acted on an email whose genuineness was never verified suggests strong lapses in protocol. It also paints a terrifying picture of how easy it would be to mislead such organizations, going on to suggest that if there are no simple checks, one could almost get away with it fearlessly.
The bigger lesson here as the AIFF reassesses the avenue taken in this case should be to embed cyber literacy and due diligence into the administrative edicts of these organizations. Institutions, no matter how venerable, need to take extra caution in today’s hyperconnected world, where facades can be simulated with a few clicks.
Last season, Marquez worked two jobs: he was FC Goa’s coach. In July of last year, he assumed leadership of the Indian squad. In addition to winning the ISL trophy with FC Goa and Hyderabad FC, he provided opportunities for younger players. However, as coach of the Indian team, he was unable to duplicate that.
Be it an innocent one or a cautionary tale, the story is that this time the foolishness in the digital world did not come easy, and it was Indian football’s credibility that paid the price.
