My Idea of Development of Football in India
Has Indian football fallen behind in growth as compared to other Asian leagues? Surely the answer will be YES, and why is it so? To be honest, that always makes me wonder. No doubt we have seen rise of football fever over last decade in India but all that love seems to be for English, Italian or Spanish football leagues. Why Indians are not that interested in I-League, the apex of Indian Football? There are many reasons if you ask me and to overcome them, I have idea of 6Ps.
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Planning – Definitely it is one aspect where we need to improve. No big league in the world has grown without proper planning. Are we lacking in it? Answer will be YES. Even if there is planning still it doesn’t seem to be enough for a big nation like this. We need to go to roots to spread Indian football fever. Mere planning of things won’t make any difference, execution is also important! Most of the times that’s where we go wrong, all the plans remain on paper. Also we can think of arranging matches of national teams with some good footballing nations to test ourselves with them also this will make footy fans look at it more seriously.
Public – without support of public, nothing will work! We need to bring common football fans in the stream of Indian football and the clubs. Most of the clubs in I-League are either from East India or West India. We need saturation of football clubs to bring masses to this event. Perhaps more number of clubs in top flight will help the cause. Also match day facilities provided are really poor if you ask me. There has to have good seating arrangements, good parking facilities and clean toilets etc. to pull masses to the game.
Patience – Execution of these things is not easy and also it will not yield any fruit in short duration but still the cause shouldn’t be affected because if low public response. People won’t go and immediately embrace Indian football but it will take time and lot of efforts from authorities. We need proper infrastructure and vision to transfer this dull footballing nation onto at least some recognizable force in Asia. Japan definitely got benefited by hosting World Cup in 2002 but still they had begun the basic root development many years ago and showed patience with the proceedings. Same has happened with Indonesia, though they are not power as such in football yet common people in that country are well aware of their national team and its news. So I say, Patience Is Virtue in this case and if we show patience along with proper planning that the day won’t be far when we will be considered as one of the very good footballing Asian side and also I-League will be considered as one of the league to play in Asia.
Power – authorities need power to execute their plans, power as in full freedom to work in the right direction. They should be given full support from all the concerned boards and other boards shouldn’t dwell in between but sadly internal politics in departments, authorities is not helpful, and right now we are full of these things. Somewhere, somehow these things have to be stopped.
Paisa (Investment) – planning and execution of things need money and for that authorities should be well funded, whether those authorities are cub based on national team’s. arranging money for games other than Cricket is almost next to impossible but yet there are few if not many business houses who are willing to or will give financial aid if they are convinced with the efforts put in by the development committee or planning committee.
Publicity – publicity of games apart from Cricket is another difficult thing yet to happen in India. I-League results somewhere in the short column is not the way one will think it will help to grow football in India. Tie-ups with major newspapers to cover up Indian football in-detail, regular news and updates about I-League, national side, sometimes interviews of players are some ways media can be useful for the restructuring of Indian Football. Also fan-player meetups, open training sessions are some ways which can be implemented at club level which will definitely help the cause.
If these things and some other things are followed surely these will give nice fruit of success in following years but for that the very basic yet most important thing is desire of the authorities to make India good footballing side in Asia if not in the World.
