The All India Football Federation on Monday said it was working towards organising the Indian Super League as a season-long affair. The federation also said it was also trying to finalise details on the impending merger of the ISL with the I-League, which unsettled some of the clubs.
On the sidelines of announcing the first sponsor for the Fifa U-17 World Cup in 2017, AIFF General Secretary Kushal Das stated that a process was under way to tweak the footballing structure in the country.
“We are trying to restructure Indian football where the ISL will be longer, there will be league one and two next year, and next season everything will start after the U-17 World Cup, if everything works according to plan,” Das said. India will host the Fifa event from October 6–28, 2017. Earlier, AIFF chief Praful Patel had stated that the merger was unlikely to take place in 2017.
Das hinted that tough decisions would be made in the near future despite some of the more illustrious clubs expressing their displeasure over the ISL-I-League merger. Under the new rules, a city cannot be represented by more than one club.
As a result, there have been casualties too, with Sporting Club de Goa and Dempo SC pulling out of the upcoming I-league season. “It is a difficult task, we are working on it. There would be a lot of pain and heart-burns and rightly so. Some of the legacy clubs, who have been around for many years, would feel that they are unjustifiably taken out of the top league, but this is something we have to do for the sake of Indian football,” Das added.
Das stopped short of saying that the ISL would be the main league for the next season. However, he took heart in the growing attendances in the franchise-based tournament, which has roped in some of the best in the business among yesteryear players. We would like to try and finalise something by February-March. The problem is there are certain aspects of ISL or top leagues which need to be followed. If you have seen the ISL, the spectator attendance has been fantastic and, again, I know some of the clubs will object to that and some of the legacy clubs have not been able to create the fan base and that’s a fact.
“Hence, we are allowing them to participate in the next league, make a sustainable model for them, create a fan base and come up. For some time, there won’t be any promotion, relegation, in due course it would be an open league, it wont be a close league and that is the idea,” Das added.
The decision for India to spread its wings in uncharted territory was lauded. Das revealed that the returning Churchill Brothers were included in the order because of the aforementioned Goan clubs backing out of the tournament. This season would also see the debut of new clubs Minerva Punjab and Chennai City FC. “Churchill Brothers actually had to come in because of a court directive. We all thought it would be important to have a team from Goa, as a few other teams had decided not to participate in I-league.
“Getting Minerva [Punjab] is a great thing. We are getting Punjab back in the I-league and also there is a team from Chennai. We have seen that the crowd for Chennaiyin FC matches was good. We are hopeful that Chennai city will be able to create that kind of fan base. It is great that footprint is widening.”
Discarded clubs Air India and ONGC also featured in the thoughts of Das, who stated that their hopes of making a comeback remain nigh on impossible after receiving a diktat from the Asian Football Confederation on club licencing. “We have got a directive from AFC about club licencing. Unless these clubs, Air India and ONGC, form separate entities which they cannot because of restriction in their constitution, we cannot take them as we will not fulfill the licencing criteria which means the I-league would be then de-recognised by AFC,” said Das.