As the All India Football Federation’s League Committee met earlier in the week to discuss the I-League division two and the Super Cup to be held in the months of March and April, another announcement accompanied the Committee’s decision.

The official release, sent by the AIFF read: “It was also discussed and decided to initiate age-group leagues in the states under the State Associations. The top teams of each age-group would be able to participate in AIFF age-group leagues.”

In the aftermath of the Under-17 World Cup at home, it was clear that youth development had to be re-jigged and this is a step aimed in that direction. This project is to take part in phases, starting with a handful of states at first. Speaking to various stakeholders, it was clear that many executional challengers lie ahead for the proposed leagues.

Major resource crunch

The plan is ambitious, given that many state associations currently struggle to host senior leagues. The official line from the AIFF is that every state is to conduct it’s own senior league. Considering the differing sizes of states and the varying depths of the talent pools, uniform implementation across the board would be the wrong way to go.

The biggest hurdle obviously is one of resources, not just financial, but manpower at each state level with the technical know-how to run a league. “The state associations receive a lot of requests for club licensing, which some officials might not understand,” says an official who’s run multiple zones of the centralised youth leagues, i.e the U-15 and U-18 I-Leagues.

Club licensing and academy accreditation, although meant to outfits and academies more professional, has it’s fair share of drawbacks as well. The official continues, “Many a time, an academy will have it’s share of good players but to meet the minimum requirements is a financial challenge and the team, even if deserving, may miss out on playing in organised competition.”

A youth division match at the national stage may require Rs 40,000-45,000 to host. Multiply that several times over and figure in staff, logistical, travel and miscellaneous costs, and you find that playing in the national youth leagues is not easily affordable. The systematic phasing out of institutional teams like Air India, ONGC, who had their own grounds and the deep pockets, hasn’t helped either.

This isn’t a problem limited to the smaller clubs though. Of the 10 ISL clubs, only FC Goa, Pune City and Jamshedpur FC have their academies accredited by the AIFF (In Jamshedpur’s case, Tata Football Academy). According to an AIFF official, Kerala may have 140 academies registered in the federation’s database but only 10 participate in the national league and eight are accredited.

AIFF Academy accreditation guidelines

What model will be followed?

Given the huge cost of playing at the national level, the sensible option plus the model followed in successful football nations worldwide would be to have more of hyper-local and local games, in fact most of it at the domestic level.

The AIFF, symbolic of it’s top to bottom approach, chose to institute nation-wide leagues first, before insisting that state associations conduct their own leagues.

An official from a reputed academy states, “National initiatives fall flat if you don’t have the necessary games at the state or district level to back them up. The best age-group teams are those who dominate a league over 30-40 games. Without those games to build up game experience and endurance, you’re setting yourself up for a sub-par national competition.”

It’s not just about the club’s resources, but also about the state association’s. Lalnghinglova Hmar, secretary of the Mizoram Football Association explains, “Most of the money we have is raised by us from generous patrons and a little comes from the state’s sports budget. But if we can do it here, then why can’t the associations who have MNC’s and other corporates in their cities do it?”

The amount of funds a state association can free up will also be crucial to the level of competitions they can organise. While hotbeds may need to have two or three tiers to accommodate their local clubs, others may struggle to fill up a single tier.

It is expected that a pilot will first take place in five to six states where participation is guaranteed.

One thing is clear: a ‘One Size Fits All’ model will not work.

Meritocracy and name-sake leagues

Even if the release did mention that the top teams would progress to the national youth leagues, significant questions remain over how this would be implemented. Ideally, the number of representatives a state has at national level should depend upon the competition in the respective state leagues.

If the number of entrants were to be standardised, would it make sense for the second team from Punjab or Kerala to miss out while the first team from a football-sparse state made it to the nationals? Not only this would result in lop-sided matches, it could potentially affect the morale of teams from highly competitive states, who’ve just missed out.

Currently, there are few checks and balances in place to ensure that state associations function smoothly. An AIFF official agrees but is against sanctions, “We could punish the state associations but what will you get by banning or fining the poor? They struggle for funds as is.”

While some states do run leagues at the moment, those are at the most a month long, hardly fitting the definition of a league. Most teams which take part disband afterwards, re-grouping again at the time of other tournaments.

Clearly, the AIFF and it’s constituent stakeholders have a lot to ponder about. Re-building a broken system was never going to be easy but the patch jobs don’t necessarily have to be swift or overnight. The challenge, as it always is with Indian football, is to make this work in the long term.