Arunava about Football A look at football & the world through my eyes!
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It is now done and dusted, the Indian Super League and the I-League will be played in the 2017/18 season in parallel from November 2017 to March/April 2018.
Interestingly a lot of media reports and social media comments wrongly stated that by the AFC and FIFA agreeing to this short-term parallel Indian Super League/I-League scenario it is an endorsement of the ISL.
My simple question is, then under what rules and regulations was the ISL being played over the last three seasons? The ISL was termed a tournament but it had an okay to operate in India by FIFA and the AFC before it was launched, it also was part of the international transfer market, and the world and Asian bodies knew that IMG-Reliance wanted the ISL to become the top tier of Indian football, while the AIFF was in the know of the idea of their marketing partners.
But now with the given scenario of the FIFA U-17 World Cup in October 2017 and India set to play the SAFF Cup in May 2018 it left the AIFF planners with only six months to complete the two leagues (or a league plus tournament to those who keep calling the ISL a tournament) and that was just not possible with seven/eight months not enough over the last three seasons.
So in the end there was only one solution in the interim possible and that was to run the ISL and I-League in parallel. Now the high flying ISL will face an I-League which has improved considerably over the last three/four years and with many players reluctant to join the draft, there might be some quality players opting for the I-League instead of the ISL, which the AFC also stated in their letter, a playing field between the two leagues in broadcasting quality and the spread of players.
The AFC had said earlier, let the Indian Super League and I-League battle it out on the playing field in a knockout tournament, if that will happen will have to be seen.
But this as mentioned is only a short-term fix as the future of Indian club football is still to be decided and it is not clear if this status quo will only be maintained for one season or if it might go on for two years until a final mid- to long-term solution is finalised.
