Chief coach Stephen Constantine on Tuesday credited the Indian Super League for the national team's progress in recent times, saying it has made the country "universal".
"The ISL has made us universal. It has told everybody in the world that Indians not only play football but we're not bad either, and we have some good players," the head coach said on the conclusion of AIFF's two-day workshop for scouting for coaches.
Five successful away wins during a 10-month unbeaten streak could take India's ranking to 101 in the next FIFA rankings, which will be updated on Thursday.
"I would be a little beat happier if Bolivia didn't beat Argentina, because then we would have been 97. Having said that, yes I'm happy and we can absolutely do better."
The Englishman cleverly dodged the contentious issue of the ISL and I-League merger and quipped: "That's above my pay scale... but it's a nice question. "All I am interested is that there are games with Indian players, so that I can select them for the national team. I've said quite a bit about a lot of things. We don't need to be talking about that today." Constantine said Indian football was on the right track without depending too much on captain Sunil Chhetri and the competition for spots is fierce.
"I don't think we are dependent on Sunil Chhetri. He happens to be in the right place at the right time which is why we play him. There's fierce competition for all places. Now at the senior national team they are killing themselves (for places in the starting XI).
"We have three or four who can play leftback. We have four-five for right back. No one is guaranteed. This is the competition we want. There's no complacency in our national team at the moment," he added.