Indian football’s structure needs to change

 

Every time India lose an international football match, there is a hue and cry about player selection and the policies of the national coach. But this is a myopic view. Do not blame the players or coach Stephen Constantine.

The malady is much more deep-rooted and cannot be solved by just changing the national coach or including or omitting certain players. The structure of Indian football needs to be altered otherwise the paucity of talent will always remain.

For instance, winning teams in the National Football League in 1997, known as the I-League since 2007-08, have always relied on foreign stars for goals. Dempo’s five successes were mainly due to Ranti Martin’s lethal finishing, ably supported by Brazilian playmaker Beto.

When Churchill Brothers won in 2009, it was the powerful Nigerian striker Odafa Okolie who starred. East Bengal’s triumphs in 2000, 2003 and 2004 were mainly due to the goals by Omolaja and later, the speedy Mike Okoro and the late Cristiano Junior. Mohun Bagan first won the NFL in 1998, due to the prolific Chima Okorie. Two years later they had the finest collection of foreign forwards ever in Indian football, Stephen Abarowei, the Brazilian Jose Ramirez Baretto and striker Igor Skhvirin.

When Bagan won the I-League in 2014-15, they relied on goals from Sony Norde and the hyper-active Japanese Yusa Katsumi. Salgaocar relied on goals from Chidi Edeh for their I-League victory in 2010-11.

Even the now defunct Mahindra United’s solitary triumph in 2005-06 was due to the finishing prowess of Baretto and the ageless wonder Yusif Yakubu.

To a certain extent, Bengaluru’s I-League triumph in 2013-14 was also due to India strikers Robin Singh and Sunil Chhetri, who finished as joint top-scorer, along with Australian poacher Sean Rooney.

So Indian strikers do not get a chance to play regularly and hone their finishing skills. Hence in the recent past so many strikers like Ashim Biswas, Dipendu Biswas, Sushil Kumar Singh, Alex Ambrose, Sheikh Sanjib and Hardip Gill shone briefly and then faded away.

The focus of domestic Indian football’s schedule is only on the I-League and ISL. Tournaments are being terminated, the Federation Cup has been stopped from this year, the IFA Shield has become a U-19 year’s event and the Durand may also be held biennially. Local leagues are only held seriously in Kolkata, Goa and some northeastern states.

In the past useful strikers like Magan Singh (Rajasthan Police) and Bhupender Thakur (Himachal Pradesh) emerged from non-traditional centres as there were over a hundred domestic tournaments all over the country. Drastic changes are needed like no foreigners in the 2nd division I-League and more domestic tournaments launched so that institutional or clubs teams get more chances to play. Domestic football must become more competitive as then from quantity, quality players can emerge. Just now the cupboard is bare and no coach can work miracles.

The only exception were JCT, winners of the inaugural NFL in 1997. They had two of India’s finest strikers Baichung Bhutia and I.M. Vijayan in their team. They played as important a role as Nigerian recruit Abarowei.

Indian football in dark ages

Indian coach Stephen Constantine

Following a 3-0 humbling at the hands of Iran, Indian coach Stephen Constantine made a rather profound statement. “We have to stop saying we have potential and start realising the potential we have,” he said.

At a time when the sport is seemingly growing in popularity and the Indian Super League having taken the country by storm by way of eyeballs and money, stacked away in a corner beneath all the cobwebs of fickle promises, Indian football continues to live in the dark ages.

The domestic league continues to struggle with the clubs, except for a select few, finding it hard to come up with a sustainable plan while the status of the league itself has been called into question as the AIFF so negligently swatted the schedule to a corner to make ISL the focus.

I-League hardly receives any promotion and it could further be hamstrung by persistent rumours that Bharath FC and Pune FC may back out of the league due to financial difficulties.

While ISL could prove to be an advantage to the country’s football culture, it should not come at the expense of the established league and tournaments, the latter of the two having been discontinued from this year. All talks of merging the two, while potentially being a solution, opens up a whole new can of worms.

Meanwhile, at the international level, the team continues to meander at the bottom half of the rankings list. Having played less than two dozen friendly matches in the FIFA calendar over the last 14 years, which is the only way to bring up the rankings, it is a major reason for the low status. But the fact remains that there is minimum effort to pack more into the calendar although World Cup qualifiers seem to have taken care of that problem at least for the current year. Even tactically, the country seems to have advanced very little as the long balls continue to rain forward, perhaps being the easy option. Being a country where players are predominantly on the smaller side in comparison to other nations, approaching the game in a different manner would, ideally, be in India’s benefit.

One could strongly argue that in the ISL, Indian players appear a level above their usual selves because of the strong foreign contingent (six foreigners and five Indians) in the line-up whose awareness and football intelligence brings into play the necessary movements and passes at the right time. Former Indian coach Armando Colaco stated that getting the U-17 World Cup is the best thing to have happened to Indian football.

Probably a day may dawn when India can realise its potential and put 11 quality players on the field. But that day will not arrive anytime soon with the way things are going.