Lector Mascarenhas

Proud member of the Goa Jr National Team that won the championship in 1981 and the Senior National Santosh Trophy in 1984.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The positives and negatives of ISL



The slogan ‘Lets football’ coming from IMG-R backed ISL has captured the heart and minds of all the sports loving people in the country. The stage is all set for an extravaganza to be unfolded on the 12th of Oct 2014, where else, at Kolkata, the football crazy state in India. Football is the most popular game in the world and that’s why FIFA has more countries affiliated with it (209) than even the United Nations Organization (193).
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.

 

 

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