I have a suggestion. Realistically IMG Rel will not accept the full change of ownership of the league, and eventually they may back out, which can be dangerous at this situation. To solve this problem, my solution is, manage IMG Rel with a certain percentage of ownership and rest percentage by clubs for a certain period of time, say for 10 - 20 years. After that IMG Rel ownership will be phased out step wise. Also problem with ATK is to be sorted. It may sound odd to shift ATK base to North Bengal, but for long term that would be beneficial, in terms of popularity, fanbase, overall bengal football. and rightly pointed by @atuljg we need serious restructure of some state leagues, we need a pan west bengal league for example. at least a kolkata conference and rest of west bengal conference. Many talents are there in the district, often go unnoticed simply because they has no platform to showcase, or unwilling to move to kolkata at a tender age.
May be Atletico De Siliguri aka ATS. just a suggestion. It can represent northern part of bengal as well as sikkim. two hot beds for football. also kanchanjhangha stadium is there. They can renovate it, and use as a home stadium. Siliguri do have a small but decent international airport and good hotels.
Well his point is i guess we need a new club with a base which is not kolkata!! There are already three big historic clubs in kolkata with three different ideologies, though i mean no offense !!!
That is true. Notice the places these ISL teams are in, they would not go for Siliguri, at least yet. Like I said in the other thread, it will probably come down to bidding in which certain I-League teams will be given "first choice" but in the end either Bengaluru FC get in or something happens in which no one gets in for "technical reasons". Why would East Bengal or Mohun Bagan come in? There is already Atletico de Kolkata and while Kolkata can sustain 2 clubs (even 3 or 4) it would be way to early to introduce a second team, one that plays in the same stadium (let along 2 more), and which has fans that also support the current one. It would never be allowed. Shillong Lajong have a chance but they can barely even pay there players these days, Aizawl is to small and will probably be okay with Mizoram Premier League, the Goan clubs will be backed down, Pune and Mumbai won't come in and who knows about DSK or any other 2nd Division club.
None of the current ISL clubs will go and if one does go off the deep then they will deal with it internally, not externally through I-League clubs.
North bengal specially darjeeling district and the tea estates do have a large population of non bengali speaking population. also add sikkim. they can actually create a loyal fan base of their own.
again if they have a peripheral vision then only the move can actually happen. obviously there are other lucrative markets. but the owners are based in bengal only. same logic for ozone, kbfc etc.
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