Sole reason for ISL being born was Ambani's greedy nature to exploit sport as business field. Nothing else would have mattered (even if I-league was popular).
Greedy ? i see Blame him all you want but the thing is that nobody even dared to invest in Indian football before him They've injected and lost millions of dollars .Blame all you want but ISL brought the much needed professionality, popularity and investment which I-league would've never accomplished .
Professionality ?? Define that please? Half the clubs don't have a training field and office....anelka wouldn't even be able to name all the indian players on his rosters
Also lost millions of dollars is straight from the img-r pr book....has anyone seen the books??? Most of money was adjusted in tax breaks IMO
Dude, one needs to see beyond the glamour and money aspect. How much ISL has changed the footballing scenario in India? Did it improved football infrastructure?-No. Is ISL team involved in off-field development apart from the 3-months time?-No. Does ISL teams have dedicate office space (forget about stadium and other aspects)?- No. Tell me apart from bringing some extra thousands of people to the stadium, what has ISL done? I can bet that half of the crowd simply dwindle if you remove the movie stars and apparent glamour from the scene. From my IPL days, I have been against franchise format which has developed in India. This is totally ridiculous. These so called rich franchises are completely relying on the small scale regional academies based in villages, town, etc. to develop talent for them and in the end they are just juggling with already developed talent to earn few quick bucks. I do agree people will argue that ISL is very new to do so. What about then IPL (on which ISL is based on), which is a decade old now? Take any franchise sports such as Hockey, Kabbadi, etc. its all the same. Even if ISL increase the length of the ISL to 8-9 months. I dont think it will change the scenario. On the flipside, many franchise simply close because of the increase of the expenditure. Also, the day the ground level academies or clubs closes, these franchise based leagues will also cease to exist. One needs to understand it. And please dont talk about professionalism. I can bet many blind ISL supporters even understand the meaning of professionalism.
On the other hand, I-league and I-league II are also not a saints. It lacks professionalism big time, I agree. Apart from usual uninterested nature of AIFF babus, even I-league clubs have been very rigid in India. They haven't tried to change at all with the changing technology. What was stopping them to glamorize themselves? to popularize themselves to new generation? Their lazzy nature has brought India to present condition. As a result, they are lacking by a tremendous margin to other European and foreign counterparts in terms of popularity. But they have been long involved in development of football from infrastructure to environment to players (even though they lag in that also behind). But, one needs to understand that I-league and I-league II clubs have the ability and willingness to develop future star, not ISL franchises.
The day, any ISL club develops a footballer for a future. I will gladly support ISL. Because for me, the only league that is actually developing footballer or developing/maintaining football environment for future are I-league and I-league II (eventhough I agree it is lagging far behind to modern counterparts in the same). For me: Something is better than nothing!!
people forgot match fixing charges on I-League nd Dempo nd how they were hidden
www.telegraphindia.com/1140116/jsp/sports/story_17828609.jsp#.VrNQmzNx9kc
Dempo at that time was ACL quality team just lost by 1 goal to al Saad AFC Champions league champion that season. Air India was like PIFA type team. so this type of score line is no surprise.
But why we are talking about private Tournament and its club in a thread of Association to whom country official league clubs are affiliated .. Bizarre people around
Comments
Blame him all you want but the thing is that nobody even dared to invest in Indian football before him
They've injected and lost millions of dollars .Blame all you want but ISL brought the much needed professionality, popularity and investment which I-league would've never accomplished .
On the other hand, I-league and I-league II are also not a saints. It lacks professionalism big time, I agree. Apart from usual uninterested nature of AIFF babus, even I-league clubs have been very rigid in India. They haven't tried to change at all with the changing technology. What was stopping them to glamorize themselves? to popularize themselves to new generation? Their lazzy nature has brought India to present condition. As a result, they are lacking by a tremendous margin to other European and foreign counterparts in terms of popularity. But they have been long involved in development of football from infrastructure to environment to players (even though they lag in that also behind). But, one needs to understand that I-league and I-league II clubs have the ability and willingness to develop future star, not ISL franchises.
The day, any ISL club develops a footballer for a future. I will gladly support ISL. Because for me, the only league that is actually developing footballer or developing/maintaining football environment for future are I-league and I-league II (eventhough I agree it is lagging far behind to modern counterparts in the same). For me: Something is better than nothing!!