Major Boost for Indian Football

It’s raining crores for Indian sports! It started with ‘Brand Saina Nehwal’ touching the crore mark just a few months back. If a badminton star can get a crore in India, cricketers can get a lot more. And so our dashing skipper MS Dhoni created a record of sorts last month by inking a Rs 29 crore deal with Maxx Mobile. And to top it all, the All India Football Federation has now signed a whopping Rs 700 crore deal with IMG-RIL for the development of the sport in our country.

IMG Reliance will power Indian Football now

Encouraging news for us football fans for sure! However, I can’t help being a little skeptical about the AIFF deal. A similar agreement had been signed with Zee Sports half a decade ago. While the amount was not as staggering, the promises made were very similar. Promises to promote and develop the beautiful game in our country. Promises that have remained largely unfulfilled till date.

Trying to be optimistic though, the substantial difference in the size and the profile of the two contract-partners is quite heartening. In contrast to Zee Sports, a fledgling television channel struggling to make its presence felt, the IMG-RIL combine brings with it the proficiency of one of the largest sports management firms in the world and the monetary clout of one of India’s largest business conglomerates. IMG, with its experience of conducting the English Premier League and our very own IPL, sure looks like a good bet to revamp the domestic football scene in India. One that is already brimming with tournaments like the IFA Shield, Durand Cup, Rovers Cup, Santosh Trophy, Sikkim Governor’s Gold Cup, Bordoloi Trophy et al. A lot of these tournaments are rich in history and tradition, but sadly are quite irrelevant in the present scenario. While not terminating these tournaments altogether, the AIFF and IMG should ensure that the big clubs and the big players only play in select few competitions like the National League and the Federation Cup.

The National League, or the I-League as it is called, itself needs major restructuring. The league, consisting of 14 teams this year, has been dominated by teams from Goa and Kolkata since its inception. And 9 of the 14 teams this year come from Kolkata or Goa or Mumbai. However, if the game has to be developed in this country, it is essential that we try and make it popular throughout the length and breadth of India. And contrary to what we may think, football is followed by a fairly large number of Indians. Especially the youth in India are crazy about the English and the Spanish leagues thanks to ESPN, and spending their pocket money on buying cool Man United, Chelsea or Barcelona merchandise has been in vogue for quite some time. However, the lacklustre, not-well-promoted and often-not-telecast Indian competitions do not find favor with them. And that is precisely where IMG can help, in developing the infrastructure and promoting the game aggressively so that the youngsters find it trendy and cool to follow the Salgaocars and the Pune FCs!

Apart from getting IMG to restructure the domestic competitions, the AIFF would do well to tap into the sporting firm’s expertise in providing high quality training facilities. The IMG Academies in Bradenton, Florida has some of the world’s best practice and training facilities and has been the place where several champions spent their formative years. Sampras, Agassi, Becker, the Williams sisters, Hingis, Kournikova and Sharapova in Tennis, Ernie Els, Greg Norman, Nick Price and Nick Faldo in Golf and Landon Donovan, Hidetoshi Nakata, Jari Litmanen, Damarcus Beasley and Michael Bradley in football are only some of the numerous names who learnt their crafts at the IMG Academies before making it big! While building such facilities in India would be tedious and time consuming, sending our brightest young talents to live and train in Bradenton can be a good start. We already have tennis sensation Yuki Bhambri and Indian basketball’s biggest hope, the 7 foot tall teenager Satnam Singh Bhamara honing their skills at the IMG Academies, and there is no reason why budding football talents from our country should not be given opportunities to do the same.

Having looked at the potential of the deal, I must, beyond all doubts, establish here that neither IMG nor RIL possesses an Elder Wand, as in Harry Potter stories, to magically transform Indian Football overnight. They would need the support of the clubs to be able to do so. And most Indian Football clubs have, for long and for reasons unknown, been very reluctant to embrace professionalism. There has been the odd-and-not-quite-successful instance like that of FC Kochin (estd. 1998, India’s first professional football club), but the largest and the most successful clubs like Dempo, Churchill Brothers, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal are still quite antiquated and amateurish in their functioning. The non-cooperation of these clubs with the current national coach Bob Houghton (a globally respected figure, and a coach with a proven track record when it comes to working with Asian teams) has often resulted in dfficulties during the selection of the the national squad and the subsequent under-performing of the team. No wonder then that we still languish at the 142nd spot in the FIFA rankings. Instead of bickering with Mr. Houghton, or spending millions on sub-standard foreigners, it’s time the clubs started adopting a more professional approach and focussed on the development of infrastructure and of football at the grassroot level.

It is almost absurd to believe that a population of over a billion would have a dearth of talent. It is the same bunch that produced a Mohammed Abdul Salim (a barefooted genius from Kolkata who mesmerized the Britishers when he played for Scottish champions Celtic in 1937), a team that almost defeated mighty France at the 1948 Olympics, and another that beat Korea to emerge as Asian Games champions in 1962. But as the world moved ahead, we struggled to provide opportunities for proper training and development to our players, thanks to a general decline in interest among the people and a lack of capital. Now that the money is back, it will be interesting to see how the AIFF teams up with IMG-RIL to promote and market the game and work towards its development in a country where European football is more popular than the domestic competitions! Even FIFA, the world governing body, has pledged an additional $2 million as part of the ‘Win in India with India’ campaign. The onus is now on the AIFF, led by aviation minister Praful Patel, to make sure that the money is utilised to make India fly high in the world of football, and not by the officials to fly business-class to Brazil to watch the World Cup in 2014!