Introduction of new formats in Indian Football

Football is one of the most popular sports in the world and played by more than 200 countries. There are quite a few popular football leagues which are followed by a large numbers of people all across the world. Among those top soccer leagues,  Premier League in England , LA LIGA in Spain , Bundesliga in Germany , Italian League in Italy, UEFA Champions League in Europe , are the most watched football leagues  in the world. Although these leagues are only based in few countries but its popularity is quite enormous in all across the world. Other than the club leagues of respective countries, tournament like World Cup, Euro Cup and many others region based football competition are followed by almost all around the globe.

India being an Asian country is famous for its football passion, where football is played by maximum number of youths and more than 25 official football leagues take place every year in India. Despite of the fact that India is still quite lacking behind as far as playing at the top level is concerned, nevertheless, the recent introduction of the world famous league ‘ISL’ has taken Indian football to a different level in the world football arena. Many popular players and coaches from all across the world are associated with the league very professionally.

The sudden growth in India Football is mainly the initiative taken up by ‘ISL Reliance and All India Football Federation (AIFF)’. Being the top administrative body of Indian football AIFF in collaboration with AFC (Asian Football Federation) and FIFA have taken some positive steps and made some changes in the existing rules to give it a perfect shape. Unlike earlier the entire player registration and other football related work are now done online these days.

This online registration process has undeniably turned out as a valuable prospect of Indian football, especially the modernization of youth football. Apart from the online registration part, AIFF has implemented some other changes, in their development process. Academy Accreditation and introduction of three youth leagues are the most popular initiative adopted by AIFF in recent time. They have made a basic structure to strengthen the youth structure of the structure of the country, where academy accreditation indeed played a crucial rule and at the same the AIFF were able to bind all the participating football clubs under a respective process.

They have structured the Youth league as per the rules of FIFA, where three youth I-League competitions are being planned up , U-13, U-15 and U-18 for the time being  and they are now on the way to launch the baby league in the country. Since youth development process is one of the major aspects to become successful in world stage, AIFF seems to ensure each and every principal of FIFA to succeed and thus there new venture of implementing the ‘Players transfer and training compensation fees‘ has been blueprinted in association with AFC.

The first set up for the Players transfer and training compensation process took place on 10^th and 11^th January at AIFF football house where ISL in the first slat and I-League along with other youth league playing clubs attended the 2^nd seminar respectively. Mr. Darren Bailey and Mr. Pushpargha Chattacharjee have chaired the workshop on behalf of AFC and AIFF respectively. The main objective of the seminar was to get a sense of the present scenario of Indian Football and based on that Mr. Darren Bailey will draw the format for next three months which is expected to be the best possible  structure for Indian football. 

I, really consider myself fortunate, that I was able to represent my club on the workshop. Without a doubt I can say, the initiative will surely be helpful for the Indian football and now on the small clubs will be benefited as it has always been an issue in Indian football, where big clubs sign-up the youth products of small clubs without any compensation fees . Thus it can be expected that the implementation of “Players transfer and training compensation process” can be a helpful project for all the clubs in India.

Having said all the positive sides, I must lay emphasis on the fact that all success depends upon the right implementation of the process, because it is assumed that there are still some loopholes and AIFF must be very careful about formulating the final structure of the compensation fees to ensure that all the stakeholders should get the maximum benefit out of the project.