Shifting goalposts: AIFF chief Kalyan Chaubey needs to come clean on the ISL not having relegation
Last month, Mohammedan SC were crowned champions of the 2023-24 I-League season, the second tier of men’s club football in India. The title, Mohammedan’s first ever, also earned them a place in next season’s Indian Super League – the pinnacle of men’s club football in the country.
For football fans in Kolkata, Mohammedan’s victory would finally unite them with the two big Kolkata clubs, Mohun Bagan Super Giant and East Bengal FC in India’s premier football league.
By Saturday, the ISL season will also come to the close as Mohun Bagan take on Mumbai City in the final. Yet questions remain about the structure of leagues.
For the first nine years of its existence, the ISL had been a closed league with no promotions or relegations. Instead, clubs could join the league if they paid an annual licence fee of Rs 15 crore.
The ISL is run by Reliance subsidiary Football Sports Development Limited. It is the commercial partner of the All India Football Federation. It allots prime-time slots for games on television and gives the clubs a share of the broadcast revenue. With almost all of the money in Indian football being pumped into the ISL, Bengaluru FC, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal – all former I-League champions – joined the league.
After being a closed tournament for nine years, the ISL was directed by the Asian Football Confederation to implement a system of promotion from the 2023-’24 season. This followed after ISL was granted the status of India’s top league.
As per the Asian body’s roadmap for Indian football, promotions and relegations of clubs were necessary to ensure healthy competition. This meant that I-League winners from the 2022-’23 season onward would be promoted to the ISL, while the lowest-placed ISL team at the end of the 2024-’25 season would drop to the second-tier I-League.
But a few weeks ago, All India Football Federation president Kalyan Chaubey hinted that relegation from the ISL would not be implemented from next season as planned.
“I understand, because of the format, if a franchise gets relegated, then there won’t be much motivation for the team to continue in I-League,” Chaubey told The Times of India.
“ISL franchises invest heavily, and they know they are there with long-term [plans],” he said. “ISL is not ready for relegation, unless I-League raises its bar. There should be a minimum gap between the two leagues.”
There are several problems with Chaubey’s statement. Chief among them is the insinuation that the I-League, which is run by the All India Football Federation, a body Chaubey presides over, is simply not good enough.
Punjab FC, which was the first I-League champions to be promoted, finished its first season in the ISL in eighth place. It was just three points outside the playoffs zone and ahead of three former ISL champions in Bengaluru FC, Jamshedpur FC and Hyderabad FC.
It cannot be claimed that I-League teams do not possess quality players, since ISL clubs tend to poach players from the second tier.
By Chaubey’s logic, the standard of the ISL should then perhaps go down.
Chaubey’s claim that ISL teams invest heavily and plan for the long term flies in the face of the fact that Hyderabad FC are struggling financially. A host of its foreign and first-team Indian players left the club through the season over non-payment of salaries. Many of the staff have not been paid for months.
Ironically, Hyderabad FC was formed after FC Pune City, one of the inaugural eight franchises, folded up after facing similar financial problems.
Just a year ago, Chaubey was batting for the ISL to be an open league, going as far as to say that without relegation, “teams can sometimes be left with no motivation”.
So which is it? Are teams demotivated by the absence or presence of relegation?
The All India Football Federation president’s constant back and forth in the matter of ensuring a level playing field for Indian clubs hurts Indian football in the long run. It is high time he takes a definite stand.
It is not a question of Chaubey's position or preferences in this issue. AIFF had agreed to start pro-rel in ISL from this season. AFC also have some answering to be provided to FIFA. It is to be seen how AFC react to this.
As it is, the ISL clubs have been kept insulated for a decade and most are yet to find their footings. This is simply because ISL is a synthetic league, not representing the true state of Indian football. Now is the time to jettison the useless or incompetent clubs. No leagues in the world are this much protective. ISL clubs have not done anything to improve grassroots level, and not contributed anything in infra improvement. They don't deserve this protection.
If AIFF think I-league is under par, they should bolster it to raise the level, not keep ISL at higher level artificially. The true level of Indian football is the level shown by I-league (however bland it is), not the rizz of ISL.
At the end of the day, a Punjab FC is much better in fighting spirit (though they have their own shortcomings) than a Pune FC or a Hyderabad FC, because they have come up the hard way.
Actually like I said earlier for many years, my dream is to see a 20/18/16 team top league. So I don't want relegation till we reach that numbers. But Kalyan Chaubey is very wrong in his I league standards statement. I don't agree with it.
Comments
The grand league operates for a whopping 12 days with 3 rest days in between. Players from Gujarat to massively benefit from the 9 day schedule.
Coaches are very excited to monitor the player progress. Overall a big day in Indian football, Jai Hind!
Shifting goalposts: AIFF chief Kalyan Chaubey needs to come clean on the ISL not having relegation
Last month, Mohammedan SC were crowned champions of the 2023-24 I-League season, the second tier of men’s club football in India. The title, Mohammedan’s first ever, also earned them a place in next season’s Indian Super League – the pinnacle of men’s club football in the country.
For football fans in Kolkata, Mohammedan’s victory would finally unite them with the two big Kolkata clubs, Mohun Bagan Super Giant and East Bengal FC in India’s premier football league.
By Saturday, the ISL season will also come to the close as Mohun Bagan take on Mumbai City in the final. Yet questions remain about the structure of leagues.
For the first nine years of its existence, the ISL had been a closed league with no promotions or relegations. Instead, clubs could join the league if they paid an annual licence fee of Rs 15 crore.
The ISL is run by Reliance subsidiary Football Sports Development Limited. It is the commercial partner of the All India Football Federation. It allots prime-time slots for games on television and gives the clubs a share of the broadcast revenue. With almost all of the money in Indian football being pumped into the ISL, Bengaluru FC, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal – all former I-League champions – joined the league.
As per the Asian body’s roadmap for Indian football, promotions and relegations of clubs were necessary to ensure healthy competition. This meant that I-League winners from the 2022-’23 season onward would be promoted to the ISL, while the lowest-placed ISL team at the end of the 2024-’25 season would drop to the second-tier I-League.
But a few weeks ago, All India Football Federation president Kalyan Chaubey hinted that relegation from the ISL would not be implemented from next season as planned.
“I understand, because of the format, if a franchise gets relegated, then there won’t be much motivation for the team to continue in I-League,” Chaubey told The Times of India.
There are several problems with Chaubey’s statement. Chief among them is the insinuation that the I-League, which is run by the All India Football Federation, a body Chaubey presides over, is simply not good enough.
Punjab FC, which was the first I-League champions to be promoted, finished its first season in the ISL in eighth place. It was just three points outside the playoffs zone and ahead of three former ISL champions in Bengaluru FC, Jamshedpur FC and Hyderabad FC.
It cannot be claimed that I-League teams do not possess quality players, since ISL clubs tend to poach players from the second tier.
Chaubey’s claim that ISL teams invest heavily and plan for the long term flies in the face of the fact that Hyderabad FC are struggling financially. A host of its foreign and first-team Indian players left the club through the season over non-payment of salaries. Many of the staff have not been paid for months.
Ironically, Hyderabad FC was formed after FC Pune City, one of the inaugural eight franchises, folded up after facing similar financial problems.
Just a year ago, Chaubey was batting for the ISL to be an open league, going as far as to say that without relegation, “teams can sometimes be left with no motivation”.
So which is it? Are teams demotivated by the absence or presence of relegation?
The All India Football Federation president’s constant back and forth in the matter of ensuring a level playing field for Indian clubs hurts Indian football in the long run. It is high time he takes a definite stand.
https://scroll.in/field/1067296/shifting-goalposts-aiff-chief-kalyan-chaubey-needs-to-come-clean-on-the-isl-not-having-relegation
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