AIFF and Indian football
footy2011
81 Points
This is my first post in this forum. I regularly read the posts but too lazy to post one. But after watching today’s match against Afghanistan, I made my mind of expressing my views.
Following Indian football closely for several years and found numerous issues lingering with the Indian football and though there are many aspects to it I will hold AIFF responsible since it’s the parent governing body looking after football in India.
Looking at them it seems very few people who actually played the game or managed the game are associated with this body. Subrata Dutta may be the odd one out. I am not bashing them just bcoz of todays match. I am following them for quite a long time.
They did take up one good decision (with motivation and financial support from FIFA) to setup academies. But I am surprised that it took them five years to implement it (a plan for creating a football academy with 7/8 practice pitches, gym, players hostel as well as enrolling kids from 8 years old all were planned around 2007 when P.R. Dasmunshi was AIFF president ). They decided to build it in Haryana or Goa but the plan was shelved because they failed to get the land from the respective govt.
I am so surprised that if a local M.L.A from remote Sambalpur in Orissa can build a world class academy(atleast from infrastructure perspective) with 4-5 training pitches why can't AIFF?
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sambalpur_Football_Academy.jpg"; onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samba ... cademy.jpg</a><!-- m -->" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I guess better late than never. The plan is to create 4 regional academies around India and one elite academy. I was expecting that AIFF will create its own infrastructure for atleast the elite academy but now I am hearing that Pailan will host the elite academy. Pailan has scope to create a good infrastructure as they have lands available (Fifa already invested in creating 2 more fields) but I still believe that AIFF should own that elite academy instead of piggybacking on private schools. I mean AIFF bosses are drawing good salaries then why are they so stringent on creating their own assets.
I don't know where they are actually spending in Indian football. I doubt whether they are the one paying Rob Baan's salary. Remember it’s Orange sports that is actually helping them create the grass root infrastructure along with FIFA.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://orangesportsforum.com/2011/06/20/indo-dutch-football-schools-in-india-today-june-10-2011/"; onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://orangesportsforum.com/2011/06/20 ... e-10-2011/</a><!-- m -->" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Lets come to match organization. This year due to many reasons there has been more interest in football in India. I thought from FED cup atleast AIFF will do something special that will catch people's attention. But it seems they have no idea how to use the media to get people on the ground. They announced that there will be a glittering opening ceremony for I league. Indeed it was glittering with only 50 dhakis(drummers) taking an evening walk. You can find this kind of display even in local football championships in remote villages in India.
Even the new football brand ambassador Leander Paes failed to make it before the match as he missed the flight to Kolkata. Recently in Nagpur Premiere League I was surprised by the manner they hosted it for the second consecutive year gaining lot of attention from mainstream press considering most of the players are locally based or cheap African player.
In this forum several people did Kolkata bashing after India-Malaysia match because of low attendance. And now you see the same thing happening in Delhi. It’s not because India don't like football or they are not patriotic but I think the organization is failing to build up the vibe.
An example of this is the recent kolkata derby which drew around 1,00,000 crowd probably second highest attendance after 1997. Here I like to congratulate Mohunbagan admin who was solely responsible to build up the atmosphere. They planned it meticulously and knew exactly what to target for such a huge attendance. In Bengal you are either eastbengal or mohunbagan. But not everybody keeps track of the matches. That’s why you get an average attendance of around 70,000 for a regular Kolkata derby.
But MMB increased it by around 30,000 by concocting (atleast what I think) the ticket controversy. Normally this kind of extra push is required to get more people who are not die hard supporters of either team. Same thing happened in 1997 where 1,30,000 made it to the stadium only because of pre-match drama that took place for several days between P.K and Amal Dutta the two coaches and made headlines for the Bengali dailies for 10-15 days prior to the match.
I am not saying that you have to create drama before each and every match but I think atleast at this stage of football in our country where there are no star performers to add numbers on the stand you have to be innovative to get people to the stadium and increase the television TRPs.
No matter how much academies come up we will not be able to grow unless more and more kids play football at the grass root level. That’s the hard fact. Country with such a huge population like us just needs atleast 30-40% kids to play football and that will be enough to create a decent team for the future because of the diversity available in our country. For this they need to grow interest among them in domestic football along with international matches.
Following Indian football closely for several years and found numerous issues lingering with the Indian football and though there are many aspects to it I will hold AIFF responsible since it’s the parent governing body looking after football in India.
Looking at them it seems very few people who actually played the game or managed the game are associated with this body. Subrata Dutta may be the odd one out. I am not bashing them just bcoz of todays match. I am following them for quite a long time.
They did take up one good decision (with motivation and financial support from FIFA) to setup academies. But I am surprised that it took them five years to implement it (a plan for creating a football academy with 7/8 practice pitches, gym, players hostel as well as enrolling kids from 8 years old all were planned around 2007 when P.R. Dasmunshi was AIFF president ). They decided to build it in Haryana or Goa but the plan was shelved because they failed to get the land from the respective govt.
I am so surprised that if a local M.L.A from remote Sambalpur in Orissa can build a world class academy(atleast from infrastructure perspective) with 4-5 training pitches why can't AIFF?
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sambalpur_Football_Academy.jpg"; onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samba ... cademy.jpg</a><!-- m -->" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sambalpur_Football_Academy.jpg"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sambalpur_Football_Academy.jpg"){kind=link}
I guess better late than never. The plan is to create 4 regional academies around India and one elite academy. I was expecting that AIFF will create its own infrastructure for atleast the elite academy but now I am hearing that Pailan will host the elite academy. Pailan has scope to create a good infrastructure as they have lands available (Fifa already invested in creating 2 more fields) but I still believe that AIFF should own that elite academy instead of piggybacking on private schools. I mean AIFF bosses are drawing good salaries then why are they so stringent on creating their own assets.
I don't know where they are actually spending in Indian football. I doubt whether they are the one paying Rob Baan's salary. Remember it’s Orange sports that is actually helping them create the grass root infrastructure along with FIFA.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://orangesportsforum.com/2011/06/20/indo-dutch-football-schools-in-india-today-june-10-2011/"; onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://orangesportsforum.com/2011/06/20 ... e-10-2011/</a><!-- m -->" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Lets come to match organization. This year due to many reasons there has been more interest in football in India. I thought from FED cup atleast AIFF will do something special that will catch people's attention. But it seems they have no idea how to use the media to get people on the ground. They announced that there will be a glittering opening ceremony for I league. Indeed it was glittering with only 50 dhakis(drummers) taking an evening walk. You can find this kind of display even in local football championships in remote villages in India.
Even the new football brand ambassador Leander Paes failed to make it before the match as he missed the flight to Kolkata. Recently in Nagpur Premiere League I was surprised by the manner they hosted it for the second consecutive year gaining lot of attention from mainstream press considering most of the players are locally based or cheap African player.
In this forum several people did Kolkata bashing after India-Malaysia match because of low attendance. And now you see the same thing happening in Delhi. It’s not because India don't like football or they are not patriotic but I think the organization is failing to build up the vibe.
An example of this is the recent kolkata derby which drew around 1,00,000 crowd probably second highest attendance after 1997. Here I like to congratulate Mohunbagan admin who was solely responsible to build up the atmosphere. They planned it meticulously and knew exactly what to target for such a huge attendance. In Bengal you are either eastbengal or mohunbagan. But not everybody keeps track of the matches. That’s why you get an average attendance of around 70,000 for a regular Kolkata derby.
But MMB increased it by around 30,000 by concocting (atleast what I think) the ticket controversy. Normally this kind of extra push is required to get more people who are not die hard supporters of either team. Same thing happened in 1997 where 1,30,000 made it to the stadium only because of pre-match drama that took place for several days between P.K and Amal Dutta the two coaches and made headlines for the Bengali dailies for 10-15 days prior to the match.
I am not saying that you have to create drama before each and every match but I think atleast at this stage of football in our country where there are no star performers to add numbers on the stand you have to be innovative to get people to the stadium and increase the television TRPs.
No matter how much academies come up we will not be able to grow unless more and more kids play football at the grass root level. That’s the hard fact. Country with such a huge population like us just needs atleast 30-40% kids to play football and that will be enough to create a decent team for the future because of the diversity available in our country. For this they need to grow interest among them in domestic football along with international matches.
Comments
Same applies to the local organization like IFA who scheduled the local Kolkata league along with I league. I doubt whether these guys are smoking pot when they are making the schedules. The new Indian coach never got the complete team to practice for three consecutive days where all other SAFF countries had decent preparation for the cup. This will continue after the SAFF and one can only keep their fingers crossed for the upcoming Bayern Munich as well as the AFC challenge cup.
Finally it’s easy to criticize without having actual facts and may be indeed things are going at the right direction and AIFF doing its best. May be tomorrow India will start winning again and everything will be “ALL IS WELL”. But if football in India as a whole has to grow, the national team has to perform consistently and the interest needs to trickle down in each and every corners of this country. This needs to happen quickly else it will be gilli-danda or F1,G1,H1...... all over.