Arunava about Football A look at football & the world through my eyes!
Related Articles
Some I-League clubs, who are against the future roadmap of Indian football, are hoping that world football governing body FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will intervene in their favour when the final structure of top level professional football in India is decided.
But the question is what is the role of FIFA and the AFC in all of this?
To start off the AIFF is a member of the continental body AFC, while the AFC and the AIFF are both a part of FIFA.
Normally decisions within a country remain that of the national football association (federation) and only if they break general rules and regulations of football, only then FIFA or the continental body step in and intervene or hand out suspensions and/or fines.
Coming back to India, the future structure of Indian professional club football is a matter of the All India Football Federation as long as it follows the above mentioned general rules and regulations.
The AIFF along with their marketing partners IMG-Reliance have worked out a plan of a three division structure (Indian Super League, League One, League Two) which they say isn’t final yet and after presenting it to the AFC in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, a Task Force has been set-up jointly by the AFC and AIFF to look into those future plans.
One of the key elements will be how Indian clubs in future will participate in the AFC Champions League and AFC Cup, meaning qualifying through the club licensing criteria.
FIFA meanwhile is tracking matters from far away Zurich through getting updates from the AIFF, their own people in Asia and letters from I-Leagues clubs. But by having given recognition to the Indian Super League in 2014 as a second league or tournament, whatever one wants to call or define it as, they have shown that for India, FIFA is willing to think out of the box.
As a summary this means, as long as the future plans are fine with both FIFA and the AFC, even if I-League clubs feel that they are being sidelined to make the Indian Super League, India’s top tier league, they will not step in.
