Will this be revolution and a re- birth of a new footballing
nation? Will it help India qualify for the FIFA World Cup in the near future?
Or will it be just be an excellent league but not much beneficial to Indian
football.
Here are some of the positives and negatives of Hero Indian
Super League.
The Positives:
1. Grassroots Development:
All the eight franchises ie Atlético
de Kolkata, Chennai Titans, Delhi Dynamos, FC Goa, FC Pune City, Kerala
Blasters FC, Mumbai City FC, NorthEast
United have a commitment to work at the grass roots through in schools and maidan
initiatives. This is undoubtedly the basic requirement for any country which
aspires to play the game and take it to the highest level. In times to come if the stakeholders focus on the infrastructure, training, diet and other aspects of the game at the grassroots, Indian football will surely be heading in the right direction.
2. Prize money, Marquee Managers and Players
Never in the history of the game has
such a huge investments been made to create an environment and draw fans to the
stadium in this otherwise cricket crazy country. The prize money of Rs 15 crore
is second only to the hugely popular Indian Premier League (T20-Cricket) which
offers Rs 35 crore. The array of marquee players and former world cuppers with
the likes of Allessandro Del Piero(Italy/Delhi Dynamos), David James( England/Kerala
Blasters), Joan Capdevila (Spain/NorthEast United),David
Trezeguet(France/FC Pune City), Freddie
Ljungberg (Sweden/Mumbai City FC) will make the
world take notice of the Indian Super League. The presence of high profile
managers such as the great Zico( Brazil/FC Goa), Ricki Herbert( New Zealand/NorthEast United) Franco Colomba( Italy/FC Pune City),
Harm van Veldhoven( Holland/Delhi Dynamos),
Antonio López
Habas(Spain/Atletico deKolkata) and Peter Reid( England/ Mumbai City FC) together with the marquee and other international players will
collectively add experience and make the league highly competitive. The local players will get an opportunity of the lifetime to share the dressing rooms and rub shoulders with these great managers and players thus boosting their confidence.
3. Infrastructure:
All the venues ie Salt Lake Stadium,Kolkata, West Bengal, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (Chennai) Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (Delhi) Fatorda Stadium,Goa, Balewadi Stadium,Pune, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (Kochi), DY Patil Stadium,Mumbai, Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium,Assam are being refurbished
and upgraded to give the fans the best of facilities. .It will be an altogether different experience and environment at the stadiums where even families can come and enjoy the game
4. Telecast:
The telecast, rights bagged by Starports, is expected to be
of high quality and millions of fans all over India, specially those places
where there are no franchises, can watch the games in the comfort of their
living rooms. The timing of the matches being at 7 pm in the evening makes it
very convenient for fans to see the games live, either in the stadiums or in
their living rooms. This will improve the viewership of Indian football which will make the game economically viable.
5. The
Glamour factor:
The involvement of cricketers viz the legendary Sachin
Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, the Bollywood star such as Salman Khan, John
Abraham, Abhishek Bachan and the heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor, all co-owners of the
franchises will surely add glamour to the whole environment at the stadiums on
match days and may thus attract crowds to the stadium. Sponsors has always been a problems for this game to survive and with the active involvement of such stars from Bollywood and Cricket, football in India has a new launching pad.
The
Negatives:
1. The
duration of the league:
Indian Super League will be played for a period of three
months ie from 12 of October 2014 to 29th of December,2014. It’s a
round robin league with each franchisee playing games on home and away basis. With
eight franchises in fray, a maximum of 17 matches will be played by the two
franchises who reach the finals. For the development of the game, it is very
obvious that the game has to be played throughout the season. All over the
world where football is highly developed, the mainstay is their professional league
which gives the players a minimum of 30 to 40 competitive matches in a season.
This helps the players to get the required exposure and experience to perform
at their optimum. In most of the European countries, the number of clubs in the
top league is normally twenty. EPL (England), La Liga(Spain), Serie A (Italy),Bundesliga(Germany)
and Ligue 1(France).Besides this they play the Champions League and also play
for the country. In the calendar year 2012, Lionel Messi played 69 official
matches and scored a record number of 91 goals. In Asia, the countries specially those who
have played the FIFA world Cup, have 12 or more clubs playing in their top
leagues: J League(Japan- 18 teams), K League (Korea Professional Football League- 12),Iran
League-16, Kuwait League 14, Saudi Arabia League-14. India is a much bigger
country, both in size and population and therefore the number of professional
clubs in the top league should be raised to 20, if not more. Japan, the most
successful country in Asia in the game of football has a vision for 100 professional football clubs
in the nation of Japan by 2092, the hundredth season.
After playing the ISL, the
players have to depend on the I League for their development. The
present duration of the ISL,being too short, is neither good for the managers
to implement their ideas and change things nor conducive for the players to
sustain the high standard set by ISL, throughout the season. It would be much better then, in times
to come, to merge the two leagues (12+8) into one major football league, just
as it is all over the world.
2. The Number of foreign players:
The composition of each team in
in the ISL is thus: one marquee foreign player and seven other foreigners along
with 14 Indian players. Out of this, five Indians
and six foreign players are expected to play in the first eleven. So out of the
112 Indian players drafted in the ISL, only 40 Indian players will be actually
playing in the first eleven and presuming that Indian players will mostly be substituted,
another 24 players may also play. With few more changes in the first eleven,
not more than 70 players out of the 112 Indian players are likely to play the ISL
league. The situation in the I League is completely different. Only 3 out
of 4 foreign players were allowed to play in the first eleven in the I League.
Despite this, national coaches and also pundits of the game have been crying
hoarse that the local players do not get enough exposure, more so in the ‘strikers’
position and thus hinder the growth of Indian players.
The world over, the
influx of foreign players is a matter of concern. In Europe specially where
there are not much of restrictions, the players produced in the local academies
have been given a miss. The whole focus is on buying players from abroad and
improving the quality of the league. The classic example here is the English
Premier League where the number of non-home grown players allowed in a team is
17 in a squad of 25. And that is why in a recent survey conducted, it was found
that only 32 percent of home grown players started in the first eleven in the
EPL. On 8th May 2014, The FA Commission has submitted a report which
suggested reducing the number of non-home grown players to 12 by the year 2020-21. FA chairman Greg Dyke
said recently to BBC Sport “If we don’t arrest the decline you feel quite bleak about the future of English football. In
EPL “You’ll have very a good league, but it’s not about English football.” The
J League in Japan, with 18 clubs and only four non –home grown players allowed,
is the only professional league in Asia to have been given the ‘A’
certification by AFC. Thus like the EPL,we may have an excellent ‘Indian Super League’
but that may not necessarily improve the ranking of ‘Indian football’, if the number of
non-home grown players is not reduced in due course and duration of the ISL is not
increased, to have a season long league.