I am flabbergasted the AIFF media team called up citizens of India and "threatened" them with defamation! In England, this would have made front page news of pretty much every daily news outlets, and the people who were warned or threatened or whatever, will have contacted legal help to publicize the event. They would take the stance that your right express what you want as being questioned, especially by an officiating body.
Are there no lawyers on this forum? How is this even possible!
As for the AIFF media team that contacted Karen and his pal, are they thick? It is career suicide to start doing BS like that. It was only couple of years ago that Liverpool's head of media, Jen Chang called up and threatened a LFC supporter, who then publicized the event, and LFC faced embarrassing accusations and awkward questions and a law suit. Needless to say Chang was sacked and will struggle to find any alternative career of substance.
The problem is that Indian Football has exactly 50 fans in total (or may be 51, it varies you know). And all of them are found either on this forum or on a facebook group. The AIFF media probably knows all of them. So it is easy to pick someone and bully individually. This itself is hilarious enough that in a country of a billion plus people, AIFF media can silence criticism by calling the fans individually.
In India, there is huge asymmetry of legal knowledge among people. 'Legal Action' is a term used by organised corporate houses or bodies to threaten others into submission, muffle voices. In sharp contrast, in developed nations the term is used to prevent excesses by the powerful and mighty.
We are not even aware of our rights. What counts as defamation and what counts as criticism is not distinguished. AIFF people are running the football in the country and are responsible for the mess. They are accountable to the people of this country and should be subjected to every criticism possible. If such calls are made by foolhardy people in the AIFF, that should be recorded and circulated widely. We are ready to help publicize that through IFN channels.
@namewtheld - excellent points and a very good explanation. It is of course up to @karenesudhakar2050 and his pal if they want things to be publicized. I can't imagine the AIFF needing anymore bad press right now though, but it was certainly a very dumb move by the AIFF media team. Laughable.
What? 80 foreigners for 8 teams? Look, I am 100% in for states forming franchise leagues but I think we are overdoing it on what franchise leagues are... franchise league is literally no different from a normal pro/rel league! There does not have to be star or glamour or foreign stars etc.
Just have a 4-6 foreigner rule in the league, cap on the number of Indians from outside the state kept at 2-4 per team, and also have the league be 3-4 months long... that really should not be a problem!
I agree with@ArsenalFan700, also this virtually eliminates any Kerala team going via ileague 2 to ileague. Surely AIFF can and perhaps should mandate the regional leagues develop clubs along AFC licensing rules (as much as possible) and the matches to be played b/w Sep-Dec so that January onwards clubs are ready for ileague 2 and Zonal leagues (eventually)...
But then again this is AIFF we are talking about..
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Are there no lawyers on this forum? How is this even possible!