Friday , March 29 2024

A lot is expected from Indian football in 2020!

Firstly, I wanted wish all of you a belated happy New Year 2020 & hopefully it will be a great year for Indian football!

With the end of the decade of the 2010s, now comes the 20s with 2020 a decisive year for Indian football, then a lot will need to happen for overall success of Indian football across all levels in the next decade.

The most important decision of 2019 was that the roadmap for Indian club football was finalised. But now in 2020 the real work starts of putting the nitty-gritty together to implement the roadmap from the 2020/21 season onwards.

But the roadmap is only the start then a commercially viable solution needs to developed for the Indian club football pyramid of Indian Super League, I-League and Second Division to allow clubs to recover their operating costs and then become profitable in the future.

Then India will be hosting their second FIFA World Cup in the 2020 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup in November across four cities. It’s a big push for women’s and girls football in India, which hopefully is utilised to the maximum by the AIFF and other stakeholders. Women’s and girls football deserves all support to grow!

And on the boys front, the India U-16 boys will be playing in the 2020 AFC U-16 Championship with the aim of reaching the 2021 FIFA U-17 World Cup. One will have to wait and see if Bibiano Fernandes’ new boys can repeat the performances from their 2018 predecessors, who played some great football at the continental level but they lost out to South Korea in the quarterfinals and missed the bigger global tournament.

The growth and spread of the Baby Leagues and Youth Leagues needs to continue across India, which is one of the biggest success stories of the AIFF. Still I have a but, then one needs to rectify the three year gap between the Under-15s and U-18s by having an U-17 and U-19 competition to complete the youth development pyramid. Many boys are leaving the academies too early for their own goodand there an additional age group could rectify this gap with an additional year within the youth set-up.

An area which the AIFF needs to seek more help from FIFA and the AFC would be educate the Indian referees, who have come under severe criticism in recent times. There seems to be a dip in their officiating and that needs to be sorted or otherwise it will have a hurmful effect on the games they are refereeing.

And then at the end of the year the All India Football Federation (AIFF) will have their Annuel General Meeting (AGM) which will decide on the new leadership as per the constitution of the federation with a new president set to be elected.

Above I have listed the points which I personally feel that are important for the further development of Indian football.

Do you agree with me or not? Do let me know in the comments below.

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