Moreover only two things can happen to ISL: a) Incase ISL is a hit: The income and budget will keep on increasing making it difficult for others to join them at that stage thus making Ilegaue-ISL joining financially impossible.
b) Incase ISL is a flop: I think many franchise will shut down by then resulting is only Ileague surving. Thus no merger again.
Apart from that the rules are distinctively different on both leagues which will make them even more difficult to merge. This merger statement is mere eyewash to satisfy FIFA/AFC concerns.
@reddev agree with you on both counts, what I am wondering how these loose and obviously irresponsible statements from AIFF satisfies the FIFA/AFC bosses. They obviously should understand that it is not going to be feasible,
Either their top bosses are also in the game along with #IMG (a very high probability with both organisations rivaling BCCI in terms of member's vested interests and knowing #IMG's clout amongst them)
Or they don't care enough about Indian football anyways to really investigate if #AIFF/#IMG has any kind of a blueprint to implement the merger (which they obviously don't)
I don't know how this would work or what the truth is but I just want to know what is this with people saying 16-18, 8 month leagues? That won't happen, even by 2020. ISL surely can't handle DOUBLING the number of teams. That would be madness. 10-12 should be the aim by 2019-20, at least ideally.
Personally, I would not be fully upset if the final result had the ISL being a separate entity from the AIFF but still being the main league, with the AIFF being allowed to focus more on grassroots and building state leagues etc.
@ArsenalFan700 the whole reason for AIFF bosses bending backwards for the ISL is that #IMG has made sure they are part of the gravy train (smartly so!), take the #ISL out of #AIFF mandate and things will unravel, will never happen. As an analogy BCCI could have allowed the ICL , there was no way it could have competed with the ICC/BCCI sanctioned IPL but it was ruthlessly shut down simply because there was nothing in it for the BCCI top mandarins.
An evolved sports leadership like Aus/USA/Japan which allows the game to develop holistically is atleast a couple of decades away, till then it will remain a gravy train for politicians for whom this is not really a prime concern and the risks of allowing the development of professionally run sports governing institutions are way too high , so it will not happen.
You sometimes come up with great points but then you also cloud them with baseless pessimism from various sectors like IMG or politicians. It's very interesting to me.
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As an analogy BCCI could have allowed the ICL , there was no way it could have competed with the ICC/BCCI sanctioned IPL but it was ruthlessly shut down simply because there was nothing in it for the BCCI top mandarins.
An evolved sports leadership like Aus/USA/Japan which allows the game to develop holistically is atleast a couple of decades away, till then it will remain a gravy train for politicians for whom this is not really a prime concern and the risks of allowing the development of professionally run sports governing institutions are way too high , so it will not happen.