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India and football madness
Take the two biggest clubs in the country, clubs from the same football mad city who have been at each other’s throats for nearly a century and add a big Cup semi-final and what do you get? Ingredients for an awesome match, that’s what.
The giant stadium was bouncing to the tune of a whopping 131,000 souls singing, chanting and reveling as their teams slogged it out on the pitch. This wasn’t another cracking Merseyside Derby at Anfield or a classic Derby Della Madonnina at the San Siro. This was the enormous Salt Lake Stadium and Mohun Bagan was taking on East Bengal in the 1997 Federation Cup.
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You see, Indian football has had its moments, the East Bengal-Mohun Bagan rivalry and the 1950 World Cup tragi-fiasco stand out even amongst the greatest sporting tales this grand old nation has witnessed. The brand new Indian Super League aims to out-trump them all and take Indian football to uncharted new heights.
The global game and the Indian market
The best football clubs in the world right now have as many marketing masterminds off the pitch as they do sporting geniuses on it. And any marketing buff worth his salt knows that India is the market to be in right now.
Urban pubs overflow with young men and women in replica t-shirts singing their very own bastardised versions of famous club songs. Replica kits of the big clubs fly off shelves in malls the nation over. And on any given weekend, social media is awash with scathing attacks on opposition teams/coaches/fans; attacks which hold a viciousness that would make the most full throated geezers on the Kop blush. Point is, there are enough fanatics and potential fanatics amongst her immense populace to make India the football world’s last great untapped market.
The ISL is the biggest vindication of that yet. Clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool, Barcelona, PSG and even the great Boca Juniors had already set about attempting to get a foothold in the country by establishing football academies that offer courses in a variety of formats. The ISL, however, represents a whole new level of interaction – an interaction that raises the tantalising possibility that it may bring about a change in the fortunes of the beautiful game in the country
Marquee signings – Treasure trove of experience and skill
All eight teams in the fledgling league have an unmistakable stamp of superstardom on them – thanks to the always dependable strategy of having marquee signings and the introduction of some top-notch managers to man the helms. And importantly, tie-ups with top international clubs.
Let’s make one thing clear here; as great as the ‘untapped potential’ of the sport is in India, there was no way we were going to see the big names at the top of their games play in a league like ours. Moving anywhere outside your elite European leagues represents nothing short of career suicide/voluntary retirement.
Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires, David James, Luis Garcia, Freddie Ljungberg, Joan Capdevilla, Elano and David Trezeguet were almost all at top of the footballing worlds (or there and thereabout) at some point in their careers. But the fact remains that most of those high points have long since passed.
Class, though, truly is permanent. And even if the old legs don’t have the same engines in them, the skills, technique and footballing brains of Pires and co. should in no way be affected. Picking their brains and playing (and training) alongside these greats would form a rare education to all and sundry, for no Indian would possibly have seen talent of that calibre perform at such close quarters.
An eclectic collection of world-class managers
As we all well know, success in the game is more often than not highly dependent on the quality of the managers at the helm of teams – talent is wasted unless guided properly. The class of managers that will feature in the ISL promises to have a great impact on the domestic football scene.
The mix of coaches are fairly eclectic in terms of experience and pedigree – Dutchman Harm van Veldhoven (best efforts as player and manager in the Belgian second division) will go toe-to-toe with the likes of the legendary Brazilian Zico (fulcrum of one of the greatest sides to ever line up on a football pitch).
There are first timers in David James and the charismatic Marco Materazzi and old hands in the forms of Franco Colomba and Antonio Lopez Habas. Meanwhile, Rickie Herbert guided New Zealand to the World Cup in 2010 and Peter Reid is a true legend of the game.
They bring with them footballing philosophies and outlooks that are truly global and the effects these great men will have on their teams will be almost as influential as that of the much publicized tie-ups that the franchises have with big European clubs.
The European connection – Technical know-how from the best in the business
Atletico de Kolkata have close ties with Atletico Madrid and have immersed completely into the lesser known Madridistas’ footballing culture. Beyond all the pizzazz of their pre-season tour and parading at the Vicente Calderon though, lies a bond that ought to warm the cockles of any true-blue Indian football fan’s heart. `
As with Feyenoord with Delhi Dynamos and Fiorentina with FC Pune, Atletico will be providing top-notch technical support to players at their Indian affiliate. This is an important step as we have been floundering in obscurity for too long now, using out-dated strategies and conditioning regimes that always meant even the most gifted players wouldn’t stand a chance at even the most basic international levels.
The inputs of hardcore, no-nonsense professionals from countries like Spain, Holland and Italy will serve to bring about some radical changes in the way the game is played in India, and hopefully bring us up to speed with the rest of the world. An important aspect of this foreign technical support is the immense impact it will have on (the admirably compulsory) grassroots initiatives that each club will be undertaking in their city and their catchment areas.
True ‘grassroots’ programmes – Precursor to success
The AIFF Academies’ technical director Scott O’Donnel and member of the UEFA Grassroots Panel, Piet Hubers, recently kicked off the ISL’s first grassroots development programme for its clubs – including in it a three-day workshop for training the ISL clubs' appointed grassroots development officers in both the theoretical and practical aspects of different age group training and a bunch of 5-a-side,7-a-side and 9-a-side matches featuring over a hundred kids from schools across Kolkata.
All eight teams have shown admirable vision and commitment in these, admittedly, early days and with the technical support of their European affiliates and the backing of FIFA’s and UEFA’s development programmes, the initiatives offer a glimmer of hope that India has finally found a way to tap into her immense resources and identify a new generation of sporting superstars who would rather kick a ball into a net than hit it out of the ground with a bat.
This comes with a fervent prayer though – a prayer that the initiatives truly aim at reaching the ‘grassroots’, unlike the courses that the big clubs have set up already in India. Barca’s FCBescola camps charge Rs. 13,500 for a five day training crash-course, Liverpool Academy’s annual courses are all yours at Rs. 3.5 Lakh for U-17s and Rs. 4.5 Lakhs for U-19s. Exchange programmes like Intersoccer Madrid come at a whopping Rs. 15.6 lakhs. This kind of cash can only be plumped for by the elite – no middle/lower class Indian family is even going to consider fees like this.
This situation must be well and truly tackled by the ISL – the urban areas may be where the viewership (and the corresponding European football fascination) lies but talent is generally much more widespread than economic success. The legends who have come out of the favelas of Rio and Sao Paulo and the rundown neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires and Rosengard lay as testament to the universal fact that the beautiful game is everyone’s to love and conquer
From the kid whose dad’s chauffeur drops him at games in GK-II in an Audi to the kid who has to sell soda bottles at the Thrissur Municipal Stadium to earn a living - everyone has it within themselves to become great. (For the un-initiated, the latter bit refers to the humble beginnings of I.M. Vijayan, one of India’s greatest ever footballers)
Football is the people’s game, let us not forget that.
ISL must learn from the MLS, not the IPL
The ISL must not make the cardinal sin of trying to emulate the wildly successful Indian Premier League. The money-spinning T20 bonanza is merely a delicious cherry on top of a wonderfully well-constructed multi-layer chocolate and vanilla cake. Cricket has an incredibly solid base in the country – whether it be through a spread of coaching centres or highly competitive professional tournaments which start right from school levels, and go on through the district and state levels. Brilliant youth teams and reliable A and B sides complement the truly remarkable successes of the senior team and provide a conveyor belt of talent that is the envy of the cricketing world.
Football has a long way to go to even come close to this level of infrastructural and competitive framework. Hence, going the IPL way, while commercially attractive, will not be the best thing for the future of the sport in the country.
Which is why the ISL should strive to emulate the USA’s Major League Soccer (MLS). Started in 1996 with 10 teams, the MLS now boasts 19 professional teams (which will be 21 next season) who are followed by numbers that have surpassed traditionally strong sports such as Basketball and Ice Hockey. The commercial success of the MLS is an encouraging sign that the game can earn profits in even the most supposedly inhospitable markets.
What is even more encouraging is the huge role the MLS has had in the success of the US men’s and women’s national teams in recent times. If India can get at least half as much out of the ISL as the USA has gotten out of the MLS, the league can be considered an unqualified success.
Make no mistake, there is a golden generation of superstars lying out there amongst India’s billions and the ISL may just provide the spark that unleashes them onto the unsuspecting footballing world.
