i don't think the likes of Turkey, Georgia, Israel, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan should join AFC; because UEFA is miles ahead of AFC. It will be a backward step for them.
Even I don't think Australia would go back to Oceania as their primary importance was to play many matches and particiapte in tournament like Asian Cup which is compeitive. Even New Zeland wanted to join AFC after that for the same reason of getting to play many mathches as there is no proper competion in OFC.
Indian football: Former national team goalkeeper files petition before SC seeking elections in AIFF
Former India goalkeeper Kalyan Chaubey on Wednesday said that he has filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking to direct the All India Football Federation to hold elections “at an early date”.
The AIFF last month moved an application before the Supreme Court, seeking continuation of its existing executive committee beyond its term on the ground that the court-appointed administrators are yet to frame a new constitution to conduct elections.
The four-year term of the current executive committee ends next week and under normal circumstances, the elections will have to be held during the Annual General Meeting on December 21 with Praful Patel, who has been AIFF president since 2012, ineligible to contest as per the Sports Code.
“I have moved the SC as an ex-International player with an appeal not to extend the mandate of the current executive committee and hold fresh elections at an early date,” Chaubey told PTI.
“Further, I have also pleaded in the SC to correct the election eligibility process where players also can contest elections and be part of decision making body of AIFF.
“I have taken this step to approach the court to protect the larger interest of football and promote democracy and practice good governance in AIFF... the world is watching us very closely and the current happenings in AIFF will negatively impact the game from every side.”
Chaubey was in the Indian team as goalkeeper in the early 2000s, including in the SAFF Championships. He has played for big clubs like Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, Salgaocar and JCT Mills.
The Supreme Court, in a 2017 order, had appointed a Committee of Administrators comprising S Y Quraishi and Bhaskar Ganguli to formulate the constitution of the AIFF in consonance with the Sports Code.
Quraishi, however, had refuted AIFF’s claims that he had sought more time to prepare the draft constitution of the sports body, saying the document has already been submitted to the apex court.
He said the Committee of Administrators had finalised the draft constitution in December last year and submitted it to the SC in January this year in a sealed cover as directed by the apex court.
Football academies and coaches struggle to recover from the lockdown
For nine months most players have not played the game. Footballers are being given online tips. Schools have laid off coaches or their salaries cut by as much as 75%
Deepak was a football coach in a school and earned Rs 40 thousand every month. Laid off in May, he has now run out of savings and lives on loans from friends. A grocery is what he is planning to start in desperation.
He is not alone. Gaurav Patra, a Physical Education teacher in Cambridge School, became a father in March and three months later lost his job. His wife, also a school teacher, had availed of maternity leave. But once the leave was over, it was conveyed that her services too were not required. Shakti, who has done B-License Coaching, has shifted back to his village.
“I was running a football academy, Soccer Foundation, at Modern School, Vasant Vihar and was also coaching at the DDA Academy but due to the pandemic everything came to a standstill,” he explains. Senior players would be able to overcome the odds but the juniors and beginners would have a hard time to retain or re-learn the skills. Anjali, a coach at Soccer Foundation, agrees. “We tried online classes. But while 25 enrolled at first, the number soon shrank to three with all the girls dropping out,” she ruefully recalls.
“The pandemic has exposed the difference between haves and have nots in sports. Only the elite and those who can afford to hold competitions like the ISL and the Champions League will survive, ” laments Shaji Prabhakaran, President of Delhi Soccer Association.The All India Football Federation(AIFF) recently spent one and a half Crore Rupees to organise second Division I League matches though in normal times it would have cost only 30-40 lakhs, he said.
Honorary Secretary of Mizoram Football Association, Lalnghinglova Hmar, laments that the pandemic had dealt a big blow to all outdoor and spectator sports in general and football in particular. Football coach and technical head of Kerala Sports Council, SatheevanBalan, confides that “though there are no sporting activities, some players are unofficially playing on artificial turf at night to keep themselves fit”.
La Liga Football Schools used to operate more than 30 academies in India and 11 in the national capital. La Liga used to send ten children to Spain every year in exchange programme and last year four of them were selected for training in Europe.
But since March everything is closed. Sabir, former player and a coach at La Liga says “initially 500 children had enrolled for online sessions but the number soon dropped to 100. Salary of coaches had to be reduced by 75 percent”.
Online training, he points out, is no substitute to offline or practical training. Children do not enjoy it as much and find it difficult to concentrate.
What is more, even online sessions are so competitive that the average fees has come down to Rs 125 per session.“Initially we charged Rs. 500 per session but with competition from Bengaluru Academy and Baichung Bhutia Academy, we had to reduce the fees to Rs 100. Bengaluru and Biachung Bhutia Academy charge Rs 1499 for 12 sessions,” informs Sabir. In Mumbai Prashant J Singh is more optimistic. “We launched a new club Thane City FC in March but following the lockdown, we re-strategized our entire plan for 2020 and used the lockdown to get better on digital platforms as there was no physical presence.” In June four of his friends invested in the club, making it easier. But salary of coaches have still been cut by 40%.
Online training sessions are finding new ways to engage budding footballers. In La Liga online training, they are given tasks to follow the European Leagues, to watch moves and note them down, name their favourite players in different positions and explain why they are better than the rest.
This is now the new normal. But as coaches and trainers struggle and hope for better times, has the pandemic pushed India behind in the beautiful game?
Rare successes, cosmetic changes: Indian Football in the last decade has remained largely mediocre
Apart from stray successes, Indian football, at the end of 2020, is still hugely mediocre, have little or no impact at the continental level and full of cosmetic changes. In the last 10 years, beginning 2010, Indian football is more in the news for being hosts or possible hosts of international events than performance on the ground.
In the last 10 years, the only area where India have performed consistently is at the under-16 age group. Not that they made an impression at the world level, but to qualify for the Asian under-16 championships final rounds on all but one occasion was no mean an achievement. Given India’s standing at the Asian level here, it was perfectly right for the Fifa to allow India host the 2017 Under-17 World Cup.
But then, to grow and mature are considered two key factors to succeed in the beautiful game. Unfortunately, India have failed to muster the tactics.
Age-group troubles
A step ahead at the under-19 level, India are a failure. Despite all the tall claims by the All India Football Federation about the progress the game has made in the country, not once in the last 10 years, India could qualify for the Asian under-19 championships – a clear sign that those who looked promising at 16, had somehow lost their way at the crucial juncture of their careers.
The problem in this area stood most exposed in 2017, less than two months after India hosted the under-17 World Cup. The Indian team for the World Cup received unprecedented support from both the government and the national federation. Coached by Luis Norton de Matos from Portugal, they were perhaps the most well-travelled side in Indian soccer history, played innumerable matches in a host of foreign countries as part of preparations.
That the team didn’t cross the first round hurdle in the World Cup wasn’t exactly a matter of great worry. But when 13 of these boys made the squad for the under-19 Asian qualifiers and still finished third in the group with just four points, it did raise some eyebrows. There wasn’t anyone to sit down and do a postmortem on what exactly went wrong after such extensive training programme.
In reality, the story remains the same as it was after India qualified for the Asian Cup in 2008. The breakthrough was certainly there, but it wasn’t put to proper use. True, India qualified for Asian Cup in 2019, thanks to yet another superlative show by Sunil Chhetri, but there, too, the campaign ended with a first round exit. The victory against tricky Thailand, India’s first in the final rounds after 55 years, was the lone bright spot.
Consistency had never been Indian football’s forte, whether on or off the pitch. At the senior level, at least three foreign coaches have come and gone. The sacking of under-16 coach Nicolai Adam a few months before the under-17 World Cup was questionable. Equally disappointing was the closure of age group academies in Mumbai and Kalyani after starting them with much fanfare.
But then, to put all the blame on authorities would be unfair. International football is a tough field, to get a footing there is enormously difficult, leave alone making a mark.
However, things could have been managed in a far better fashion at the domestic level.
Too many experiments and changes have hardly done domestic football a favour in the last 10 years. To launch a cash-rich league as a tournament purely for entertainment and then suddenly elevate it to the level of country’s prime meet could cost dear. The worse is the policy to discard merit and introduce a kind of “pay and play” scheme to be a part the top league could lead to disaster.
Well, to carefully choose oppositions (sometime weaker ones) and play to improve Fifa ranking is an international practice; India alone can’t be blamed. However, India’s recent results in the World Cup qualifiers have come as a shocker.
The celebrations over holding mighty Qatar to a draw took a backseat after disastrous draws against lowly Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Any question of India moving to the second round of World Cup qualifiers is now simply out of question. But if it also forces India lose their way to the Asian Cup, it could be a massive blow to Indian football in the next three years. No amount of public relations exercise would be enough to rescue it.
Lack of match-winners
The biggest problem, however, lies elsewhere. The inability to produce a good number of footballers having the quality to change the course of a match at the international arena is what hurt the national team most. In the 1990s and early part of the century, there were few like IM Vijayan, Jo Paul Ancheri, Renedy Singh, Bhaichung Bhutia, Deepak Mondal, Mahesh Gawli, Climax Lawrence to take care in the middle when things were not moving in the right direction. The numbers have gone down drastically. So much so, national coach Igor Stimac had to request a particular footballer to come out of his retirement and don the national colours again. Not exactly a great sign for the game.
It brings back the memories of 2008 again. It was Chhetri’s hat-trick that paved the way for India’s qualification for the Asian Cup. Now, cut to 2017, it was Chhetri again, who struck crucial goals against Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan to take India to 2019 Asian Cup. Having already scored 72 goals for the nation, one cannot expect him to continue the good work forever. Even in the ongoing ISL, the 35-year-old is — at the time of publishing this — the top scorer among Indians.
Two factors have contributed to this problem in the last 10 years.
One: the number of matches and competitions in domestic football have drastically gone down. And most importantly, to allow six foreigners (now five) to play in the starting eleven in the country’s top league is not in the best interest of Indian football. That the national federation has little control over these matters is a well-known fact now. So, the players like Vikram Pratap Singh, Rohit Danu or Ishan Pandita still will have to wait for the opportunity to showcase their skills.
Yet, at the same time, there are the likes of Liston Colaco, Aniruddh Thapa or Rahim Ali and few others, who have done enough to raise hopes. They are now youngsters but could soon develop into men for the future of the sport in the country. The fruits of their success could only be tasted in the coming decade.
Comments
Indian football: Former national team goalkeeper files petition before SC seeking elections in AIFF
Former India goalkeeper Kalyan Chaubey on Wednesday said that he has filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking to direct the All India Football Federation to hold elections “at an early date”.
The AIFF last month moved an application before the Supreme Court, seeking continuation of its existing executive committee beyond its term on the ground that the court-appointed administrators are yet to frame a new constitution to conduct elections.
The four-year term of the current executive committee ends next week and under normal circumstances, the elections will have to be held during the Annual General Meeting on December 21 with Praful Patel, who has been AIFF president since 2012, ineligible to contest as per the Sports Code.
“I have moved the SC as an ex-International player with an appeal not to extend the mandate of the current executive committee and hold fresh elections at an early date,” Chaubey told PTI.
“Further, I have also pleaded in the SC to correct the election eligibility process where players also can contest elections and be part of decision making body of AIFF.
“I have taken this step to approach the court to protect the larger interest of football and promote democracy and practice good governance in AIFF... the world is watching us very closely and the current happenings in AIFF will negatively impact the game from every side.”
Chaubey was in the Indian team as goalkeeper in the early 2000s, including in the SAFF Championships. He has played for big clubs like Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, Salgaocar and JCT Mills.
The Supreme Court, in a 2017 order, had appointed a Committee of Administrators comprising S Y Quraishi and Bhaskar Ganguli to formulate the constitution of the AIFF in consonance with the Sports Code.
Quraishi, however, had refuted AIFF’s claims that he had sought more time to prepare the draft constitution of the sports body, saying the document has already been submitted to the apex court.
He said the Committee of Administrators had finalised the draft constitution in December last year and submitted it to the SC in January this year in a sealed cover as directed by the apex court.
https://scroll.in/field/981460/indian-football-former-national-team-goalkeeper-files-petition-before-sc-seeking-elections-in-aiff
Football academies and coaches struggle to recover from the lockdown
For nine months most players have not played the game. Footballers are being given online tips. Schools have laid off coaches or their salaries cut by as much as 75%
He is not alone. Gaurav Patra, a Physical Education teacher in Cambridge School, became a father in March and three months later lost his job. His wife, also a school teacher, had availed of maternity leave. But once the leave was over, it was conveyed that her services too were not required. Shakti, who has done B-License Coaching, has shifted back to his village.
“I was running a football academy, Soccer Foundation, at Modern School, Vasant Vihar and was also coaching at the DDA Academy but due to the pandemic everything came to a standstill,” he explains. Senior players would be able to overcome the odds but the juniors and beginners would have a hard time to retain or re-learn the skills. Anjali, a coach at Soccer Foundation, agrees. “We tried online classes. But while 25 enrolled at first, the number soon shrank to three with all the girls dropping out,” she ruefully recalls.
“The pandemic has exposed the difference between haves and have nots in sports. Only the elite and those who can afford to hold competitions like the ISL and the Champions League will survive, ” laments Shaji Prabhakaran, President of Delhi Soccer Association.The All India Football Federation(AIFF) recently spent one and a half Crore Rupees to organise second Division I League matches though in normal times it would have cost only 30-40 lakhs, he said.
Honorary Secretary of Mizoram Football Association, Lalnghinglova Hmar, laments that the pandemic had dealt a big blow to all outdoor and spectator sports in general and football in particular. Football coach and technical head of Kerala Sports Council, SatheevanBalan, confides that “though there are no sporting activities, some players are unofficially playing on artificial turf at night to keep themselves fit”.
La Liga Football Schools used to operate more than 30 academies in India and 11 in the national capital. La Liga used to send ten children to Spain every year in exchange programme and last year four of them were selected for training in Europe.
But since March everything is closed. Sabir, former player and a coach at La Liga says “initially 500 children had enrolled for online sessions but the number soon dropped to 100. Salary of coaches had to be reduced by 75 percent”.
Online training, he points out, is no substitute to offline or practical training. Children do not enjoy it as much and find it difficult to concentrate.
What is more, even online sessions are so competitive that the average fees has come down to Rs 125 per session.“Initially we charged Rs. 500 per session but with competition from Bengaluru Academy and Baichung Bhutia Academy, we had to reduce the fees to Rs 100. Bengaluru and Biachung Bhutia Academy charge Rs 1499 for 12 sessions,” informs Sabir. In Mumbai Prashant J Singh is more optimistic. “We launched a new club Thane City FC in March but following the lockdown, we re-strategized our entire plan for 2020 and used the lockdown to get better on digital platforms as there was no physical presence.” In June four of his friends invested in the club, making it easier. But salary of coaches have still been cut by 40%.
Online training sessions are finding new ways to engage budding footballers. In La Liga online training, they are given tasks to follow the European Leagues, to watch moves and note them down, name their favourite players in different positions and explain why they are better than the rest.
This is now the new normal. But as coaches and trainers struggle and hope for better times, has the pandemic pushed India behind in the beautiful game?
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/sports/football-academies-and-coaches-struggle-to-recover-from-the-lockdown
Rare successes, cosmetic changes: Indian Football in the last decade has remained largely mediocre
Apart from stray successes, Indian football, at the end of 2020, is still hugely mediocre, have little or no impact at the continental level and full of cosmetic changes. In the last 10 years, beginning 2010, Indian football is more in the news for being hosts or possible hosts of international events than performance on the ground.
In the last 10 years, the only area where India have performed consistently is at the under-16 age group. Not that they made an impression at the world level, but to qualify for the Asian under-16 championships final rounds on all but one occasion was no mean an achievement. Given India’s standing at the Asian level here, it was perfectly right for the Fifa to allow India host the 2017 Under-17 World Cup.
But then, to grow and mature are considered two key factors to succeed in the beautiful game. Unfortunately, India have failed to muster the tactics.
Age-group troubles
A step ahead at the under-19 level, India are a failure. Despite all the tall claims by the All India Football Federation about the progress the game has made in the country, not once in the last 10 years, India could qualify for the Asian under-19 championships – a clear sign that those who looked promising at 16, had somehow lost their way at the crucial juncture of their careers.
The problem in this area stood most exposed in 2017, less than two months after India hosted the under-17 World Cup. The Indian team for the World Cup received unprecedented support from both the government and the national federation. Coached by Luis Norton de Matos from Portugal, they were perhaps the most well-travelled side in Indian soccer history, played innumerable matches in a host of foreign countries as part of preparations.
That the team didn’t cross the first round hurdle in the World Cup wasn’t exactly a matter of great worry. But when 13 of these boys made the squad for the under-19 Asian qualifiers and still finished third in the group with just four points, it did raise some eyebrows. There wasn’t anyone to sit down and do a postmortem on what exactly went wrong after such extensive training programme.
In reality, the story remains the same as it was after India qualified for the Asian Cup in 2008. The breakthrough was certainly there, but it wasn’t put to proper use. True, India qualified for Asian Cup in 2019, thanks to yet another superlative show by Sunil Chhetri, but there, too, the campaign ended with a first round exit. The victory against tricky Thailand, India’s first in the final rounds after 55 years, was the lone bright spot.
Consistency had never been Indian football’s forte, whether on or off the pitch. At the senior level, at least three foreign coaches have come and gone. The sacking of under-16 coach Nicolai Adam a few months before the under-17 World Cup was questionable. Equally disappointing was the closure of age group academies in Mumbai and Kalyani after starting them with much fanfare.
But then, to put all the blame on authorities would be unfair. International football is a tough field, to get a footing there is enormously difficult, leave alone making a mark.
However, things could have been managed in a far better fashion at the domestic level.
Too many experiments and changes have hardly done domestic football a favour in the last 10 years. To launch a cash-rich league as a tournament purely for entertainment and then suddenly elevate it to the level of country’s prime meet could cost dear. The worse is the policy to discard merit and introduce a kind of “pay and play” scheme to be a part the top league could lead to disaster.
Well, to carefully choose oppositions (sometime weaker ones) and play to improve Fifa ranking is an international practice; India alone can’t be blamed. However, India’s recent results in the World Cup qualifiers have come as a shocker.
Lack of match-winners
The biggest problem, however, lies elsewhere. The inability to produce a good number of footballers having the quality to change the course of a match at the international arena is what hurt the national team most. In the 1990s and early part of the century, there were few like IM Vijayan, Jo Paul Ancheri, Renedy Singh, Bhaichung Bhutia, Deepak Mondal, Mahesh Gawli, Climax Lawrence to take care in the middle when things were not moving in the right direction. The numbers have gone down drastically. So much so, national coach Igor Stimac had to request a particular footballer to come out of his retirement and don the national colours again. Not exactly a great sign for the game.
It brings back the memories of 2008 again. It was Chhetri’s hat-trick that paved the way for India’s qualification for the Asian Cup. Now, cut to 2017, it was Chhetri again, who struck crucial goals against Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan to take India to 2019 Asian Cup. Having already scored 72 goals for the nation, one cannot expect him to continue the good work forever. Even in the ongoing ISL, the 35-year-old is — at the time of publishing this — the top scorer among Indians.
Two factors have contributed to this problem in the last 10 years.
One: the number of matches and competitions in domestic football have drastically gone down. And most importantly, to allow six foreigners (now five) to play in the starting eleven in the country’s top league is not in the best interest of Indian football. That the national federation has little control over these matters is a well-known fact now. So, the players like Vikram Pratap Singh, Rohit Danu or Ishan Pandita still will have to wait for the opportunity to showcase their skills.
Yet, at the same time, there are the likes of Liston Colaco, Aniruddh Thapa or Rahim Ali and few others, who have done enough to raise hopes. They are now youngsters but could soon develop into men for the future of the sport in the country. The fruits of their success could only be tasted in the coming decade.
https://scroll.in/field/981927/rare-successes-cosmetic-changes-indian-football-in-the-last-decade-has-remained-largely-mediocre