AIFF scraps marquee player rule for I-League

Royal Wahingdoh recently became the 3rd club to withdraw from next season’s I-League

While the footballing aficionados rejoice currently due to the ongoing Indian Super League, the regular annual tourney- the I-League involving the top teams from around the country has continued to stay in the news for all the wrong reasons. Most recently, Royal Wahingdoh withdrew its participation from the tourney which kicks off on January 9 next year. The team from Shillong thus became the third team, after FC Pune and Bharat FC to pull out of the marquee competition.

Believed to be just the tip of the iceberg, there were rumours of widespread discontent across teams and thus in an AIFF core committee meeting held in New Delhi yesterday, some vital decisions were taken.

Most importantly it was decided that the marquee player rule would be done away with it in the upcoming I-League.

The governing body had initially decided to tweak the rules for the upcoming season in order to enhance the quality but failed to find favours among clubs who have been struggling to make ends meet. The decision follows a common upheaval against the rule which was initiated at an I-League workshop earlier this year.

The clubs are of the opinion that while it is possible for franchisees to get players like Roberto Carlos and Lucio to play because of the surplus cash influx, they would struggle to import players from even smaller leagues, let aside the top countries of the world.

Talking about the decision, AIFF Vice-President Subrata Dutta said, “Clubs were spending a lot of money on players who were not up to the standards.“

“It was better to do away with marquee players,“ he added.

Federation Cup set for return in April

The committee also discussed the possibility of re-initiating the Federation Cup.

“We are thinking of bringing back the Federation Cup

The eight top I-League teams will play in the knockout based format of the new Federation Cup, where the champion team will play the eighth team, the second team will play the sev enth team and so on home and away. The top four teams will then again have two-legged semifinals and eventually a one-legged final,“ Dutta clarified.

If reports are to be believed, this move is attributed to an impending AFC rule which dictates the number of matches that a club needs to play to be able to participate in the Champions League playoffs.