Does Sporting Goa's I-League Exit Signal Another Crisis For Indian Football?

On Tuesday, Goa-based I-League club Sporting Clube de Goa announced their withdrawal from the top-flight. They follow city rivals Salgaocar out of the I-League, and are expected to be followed by Dempo SC in the same route.

In a strongly-worded statement, Sporting lashed out at the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and its president Praful Patel for pandering to the demands of marketing partner IMG-Reliance, while sidelining I-League clubs from the decision-making process in the much-touted 'merger' of the top-flight with IMG-R-owned tournament Indian Super League.

Sporting's pull-out comes months after AIFF had proposed a longer domestic league season, with ISL as the top-flight and I-League being demoted to second tier. This incensed I-League clubs, and has eventually led the departure of the Goan trio.

The governing body had set up a taskforce to look into the initial proposal, but Sporting and other clubs have alleged that they have not been taken into confidence by AIFF in the decision-making process.

With the withdrawal of the Goan clubs, the future of the I-League has once again been thrown into uncertainty.

A rapid, painful fall

The current situation is a far cry from January 2011, when India made its return to the Asian Cup after a gap of 27 years. The process of qualification was completed by virtue of the country winning the 2008 AFC Challenge Cup. After years of international ignominy, India was emerging as a promising footballing nation.

With growing corporate investment in the sport, greater focus in youth football, a competitive but undersold league in a country possessing a growing fanbase for the sport, and a national governing body armed with a Rs. 700 crore deal with a financially powerful joint-venture IMG-Reliance, things were looking up for football in India.

Nearly six years down the line, it's been quite a dramatic turn of events for Indian football. Over the years, I-League clubs have blamed AIFF for failing to come up with a revenue structure that would allow them to sustain operations in the long run.

The governing body's failure to do so has seen many footballing entities to either go out of business, or curtail their operations. The Indian Super League's arrival has made survival tougher for I-League clubs.

Another I-League club Shillong Lajong recently inaugurated 'The Mobile Centre', a mobile smartphone showroom, in Shillong.

"This enterprise is part of our initiative to think out of the box and come up with revenue models that will help in sustaining the operations of the club in the long run," club CEO Larsing Ming later said in a press release.

"Going forward we are looking at creating special purpose vehicles in the field of tourism and hospitality also," he added.

Lajong's sudden plunge into non-footballing businesses indicates the desperation that many Indian clubs find themselves in today.

AIFF's administrative indecisiveness

In recent years, the I-League has continued shrinking in size, with the number of clubs now in single figures and the upcoming season likely to feature the lowest number of clubs in India's top-flight history.

The exodus is expected to continue. Indian players are today finding it increasingly hard to find playing time due to the low number of top-flight clubs. The present situation is unlikely to inspire much confidence among the young footballers of the country, some of whom will represent India in next year's U-17 World Cup.

While ISL clubs are much well-funded than the average I-League club, they have suffered significant losses in the first two seasons, and some of them have been forced to cut down on their spending this year.

The financial sustainability of these clubs and ISL, as a whole, has come under the scanner over the last couple of years. For instance, the tournament doesn't have a broadcasting revenue stream, with Star India owning a stake in it. In modern football, such a system isn't likely to be a profitable one. That hasn't stopped AIFF from being largely supportive of the tournament.

However, approving a financially unsustainable model, while refusing to reform the existing structure, illustrates AIFF's unwillingness to find a long-term solution for the problems plaguing Indian football.

Praful Patel recently said that India would target qualification for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. With India having stumbled its way into the final round of the qualifying stage of the 2019 Asian Cup, Patel's statement couldn't be further away from reality.

Whether India manages to qualify for a major international football tournament anytime soon remains to be seen, but the sport could slip into another major crisis if the country's football administrators continue alienating some of the biggest stakeholders of Indian football.