2013-14 Indian Football Thread

The 2012-13 season is all but done now so it is time to move on to the 2013-14 season in Indian football. Hopefully it will be good. The 7th I-League, Federation Cup, Durand Cup, SAFF Cup. All to play for this season. Perhaps some surprises and new players will emerge as well.

Lets go!

 

Ehhhhh, after 3 seasons I can see only 4-5 of those surviving. The rest will fade away or just remain shit.

 

To be honest, I would not mind "killing" the Goan teams off. By that I mean I would merge them. None of the clubs are making money at all and the way the clubs are ran is better than before but still 20th century.

 

I just hope they dont do what the BCCI did with their IPL and have the franchises pay $300,000,000 for their team. ********ing hell.

 

AIFF's Emergency Committee meets in New Delhi

NEW DELHI: The President of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) Mr. Praful Patel Chaired the AIFF Emergency Committee Meeting at Udyog Bhawan in the Capital on May 27 (Monday). Besides, AIFF General Secretary Mr. Kushal Das and Senior Vice-President Mr. Subrata Dutta, Vice-Presidents Mr. Shrinivas Dempo, Mr. Larsing Sawyan, AIFF Treasurer Mr. Hardev Jadeja and I-League Chairman AR Khaleel also attended the meeting. The Committee unanimously decided on the following points:

Full Article (with the points): http://the-aiff.com/news-center-details.htm?id=4981

 

I posted this before on the Indian football forum and I will say it post it again:

The Good:

- Every club being forced to follow the AIFF licensing criteria or they would not be allowed in the league.
- Every club having to have 30 man rosters. Two U23 players in the 18-man match day squad.
- Deadline for clubs to either make or even revamp their current stadiums by 2015 (However, stadium regulations would be nice).
- Only 1 club being relegated. Means less pressure on clubs to spend mainly on squad and also keeps the supposed "excitement" of pro/rel.
- Bigger participating fee.
- Keeping the 3+1 foreign rule. I am fine with having all 4 foreigners on the pitch at once.
- Club licensing to 2nd Division clubs as well.
- The U20 I-League now turning into the U19 I-League.
- Having AIFF and Private Academies in the U19 League.
- City/State cap being set at 2 (3 for Kolkata and Goa).
- State foreign cap set to 2 players.
- Better Federation Cup.
- Football Player Database.

The Bad (with reasons):

- The clearance of JSW (Bangalore) and Mumbai Tigers (Mumbai). Both teams located in markets which don't gain fans for Indian football. Mumbai does not even have a stadium. Also it is to late as the I-League starts in August now. They would have 2 months to get players, staff, non-football staff, stadium, training ground, facilities, youth team, and marketing for fans. I have never seen this happen in two months and I doubt I will see this now.
- The Eastern and Western Conference. Will there be inter-conference games? Will we only see clubs play within there conference? In MLS we have this but we still play every single team regardless of conference. So I do not see the big logic in this. Specially in regards to travel which is not as big a problem among the clubs.
- Minimum of 5 U23 players out of 30 and mandatory of 1 U23 in the squad. It should be 10 out of 30 being U23 and 0 mandatory starters. Let them earn there spot in the staring XI. Many clubs already do this as well so this rule is not needed.
- The 2nd Division. Not what we wanted and still looks like a financial nightmare. How many teams in India below I-League are willing to spend money on travel in a 2nd Division while also "paying" players and not get anything back. Also the fee seems to high for them as well. And I doubt all the 2nd Division clubs would be able to create a U19 team unless it is like 2-3 weeks before the U19 I-League.
- The City/State cap. I put this in the good side as well but this is also bad. How can the AIFF control this? There is no way we can just force clubs out and also if we tell a Kolkata and Goan club to move in order to play in the I-League then where would they go. They would move and not make fans and thus make more losses. In many ways this is more idiotic and not logical than it is smart.

Overall: Meh, I am happy with many of these but overall I am still left wondering how this will help Indian football in the long term. Of course nothing was revealed about how clubs will benefit financially from this. No word on TV money or other sources of revenue the clubs could do/get. Many of these rules regarding the 2nd Division also just seem to be desperate attempts by the AIFF to protect the 2nd Division and the City/State cap rule is also a desperate attempt to make Indian football "pan-India". Eventually the AIFF will see that these regulations just won't work in real life.

 

The current prediction is that after each team plays each other in their conference (12 games) the top 4 from each conference would go into the final round to decide the championship and the bottom 3 from each conference go into a relegation round.

Trust me, no other place in India other than Kolkata, Goa, and a few North-East places can even support 1 team. I like the idea but I do wonder what will happen to the 4th Goan and 4th and 5th Kolkata team.

QPR will probably drop eventually when they see there is nothing to gain in this league.

 

From the discussions among normal fans and the officials on facebook the reasoning is to just lower costs on travel (which for some reason is provided by the AIFF). Thus the AIFF save money and can "spend it on youth development" (Aka: Their pockets).

I have been saying to go down to 12 teams for a while now. Of course though that was met with criticism and the many comparisons to England.

Now I will wait when there is an announcement that there is TV money and that the money is split equally among the 16-18 clubs. Each club will make literally nothing.

This is what I thought as well. Places like Mumbai, Pune, Punjab, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Sikkim, and Siliguri are all 1 team cities/states. Hell, none of these cities even support 1 club. Look at the ONGC match in Delhi and the past Mumbai FC matches in Mumbai. Zero support.

As for Mumbai Tigers. I'm guessing that the AIFF are banking on the Mumbai Tigers surviving next season and Mumbai FC being relegated (which I would not be surprised about after losing players like Gabriel Fernandes, Zohib Amiri, and possibly others soon).

Now, as for Mumbai overall, my problem is not really that we now have 2 Mumbai clubs in a city that can not even support 1, but... Where will Mumbai Tigers play? We expect this club to invest tons of money into infrastructure and youth development and yet they might not even have a stadium in there own city! I can not even think of the losses they will make financially after year 1 due to lack of support.

That is basically it with Mumbai Tigers (Dodsal Group), JSW Group, and QPR and all the other corporates that started investing in football in India like Pepsi and Manchester United. They know that if they invest money into Indian football and that Indian football actually becomes good then they can gain so much popularity and money.

In QPR's case it is fans. They will basically create a sister club which will probably glorify the fans with Queens Park Rangers branding.