The I-League has consistently churned out talent for the national team but it has never really competed with the leagues that India’s continental rivals have put together.
It’s 2014. There have been hushed murmurs about a massive revolution in Indian football but nothing has quite come to pass yet. However, there is growing excitement among football fans because the Indian Super League, long touted as the competition that will propel India to where it wants to be as a footballing entity, is just round the corner.
There haven’t been many tournaments of this ilk prior to 2014. The I-League has consistently churned out talent for the national team but it has never really competed with the leagues that India’s continental rivals have put together. Some have even suggested that the ISL would be very similar to the Indian Premier League. Not just in generating interest across the country, but in also bringing through highly enterprising players.
At the start, there is plenty of frenzy around the ISL. Fans take some time to establish an emotional connection with these clubs but that doesn’t matter a great deal, considering the level of football has drastically improved. Indian players haven’t become world-beaters overnight, although there is a sense that with the right sort of guidance, they could cast themselves as continental heavyweights.
For the past few years, the ISL has acted as the breeding ground for countless talented individuals. The likes of Jeje Lalpekhlua and Sunil Chhetri, who were stars long before the inception of the league, used it as a platform to showcase their genius to a greater audience. But for people like Anwar Ali, Jeakson Singh, Liston Colaco, Roshan Singh Naorem and Suresh Singh Wangjam, it has been the platform that has endeared them to thousands.
The list of young players benefiting from the existing ISL system is endless. The others, namely Ashique Kuruniyan, Manvir Singh and Sandesh Jhingan, also became household names courtesy of the ISL.
So, there is a decent sample space to suggest that the ISL has acted more as a boon than as a bane. It has enabled young footballers in remote areas to believe that they can ply their trade professionally. And, it has told them that this game – the game they love, could financially take care of them and their families.
The monetary aspect is worth understanding because Indian football has, historically, not been looked upon as a fruitful venture.
It doesn’t have as much money-minting potential as cricket (at least for now), meaning that there have been numerous footballers who’ve had to give up on the sport to pursue something slightly more lucrative. With the ISL, all of that has changed.
Thus, if anyone were to suggest that the ISL, in its current avatar, isn’t quite what Indian football needs, they would’ve been scoffed at. The only twist this time, though, is that those views have come from Igor Stimac, who also happens to be the Indian men’s national team head coach.
It’s not as if Stimac has suddenly started finding faults with the system. To his credit, he has been pleading for patience since his appointment and has been quite vocal about the changes that need to be implemented. It’s just that with him finally having tasted success as India manager, people have begun delving deeper into what he is actually trying to say.
From a broader perspective, it’s quite unfortunate that a national team manager has had to win three matches to hammer his point home. But considering how Indian football is usually averse to tweaks, the fact that people are buying into the narrative is proof enough for the need to change.
His first clarion call is to have more games of football in a season. At the moment, each ISL club plays a minimum of 20 matches.
If they qualify for the semi-finals, it could go up to 23. Some ISL teams also participate in the Durand Cup and the Super Cup. Most top-drawer players, though, usually don’t feature in those competitions.
The rationale behind playing more games is simple. The more minutes footballers have under the sun, the chances for them to improve are greater. Moreover, with experienced foreign players around them, it gives them more time to enhance their tactical acumen and be better prepared physically.
Jorge Costa, who managed Mumbai City FC during the 2018-19 and 2019-20 season, spelled that out beautifully in an exclusive chat with the Firstpost, explaining how an increase in matches translates to better player output.
“It is very easy to understand but quite difficult to explain for me. But it is simply about players getting better with more game time. If you play 100 more games than me, you will be a better football player than me – physically and tactically. You might make mistakes at the start but the more you play, the lesser mistakes you will make. It is just like training. We do that to improve the technical ability and the mentality. You make a mistake in a game and then we fix it. Another mistake, and again it is fixed in training. So, after a while, the number of mistakes will reduce because there is more game time and chance to correct it,” Costa said.
If a change were to be made, vis-?-vis the schedule, it would also bring more continuity to the ISL – something that hasn’t always been the case. Much of that has been down to players getting transferred every season and coaches being sacked at the drop of a hat. While an acceptable performance should ideally be a non-negotiable, the pattern of hiring managers and then firing them disrupts whatever growth path a player or club might’ve projected for themselves.
“When you speak about football in Europe, you speak about having a project. A project to become champions, or to play in the UEFA Champions League and to win some titles. If you sign coaches for one year and every year you change coaches, it becomes difficult.
Only one team can become a champion and all the others are unhappy and they change coaches. Coaches have contracts for one year. Even with the players, one-year contracts don’t really become a project. You have one coach for 3-4 years, sign Indian players for 3-4 years and then you start building something. This is my idea. This is how we work in Europe and this is something the ISL must immediately start thinking about,” the Portuguese quipped.
A lot of the off-season merry-go-round involves foreign players. Most of the foreign contingent in the ISL is on the wrong side of 30, meaning that offering long-term contracts isn’t very feasible. In turn, that leads to players distinguishing themselves at a club for a season before leaving for newer pastures.
From an excitement point of view, that seems very good, considering there is always something new to be intrigued about. But when talking about development, it acts as a serious impediment.
“When you sign foreign players who are 33-34 years old, you are afraid to give them 2-3-year contracts. You don’t know if they will adapt or what is their physical condition. This is also one thing that could change. Stop signing players of this age profile because you can’t give more than one-year contracts. If you sign slightly younger players, you can give them a two or three-year contract.
When the ISL started, teams signed big names. It did not matter if they ran a lot or not. Because the budget is not so bad, you can sign good young foreign players. Maybe it is time to start to change the mentality, sign young players for 2-3-year contracts. The league is very good and I can’t understand why they can’t do this,” Costa elaborated.
If parallels were to be drawn, the functioning of ISL clubs is very similar to how corporate firms operate. If, for example, you were an employee at one of these firms, you would ideally want a bit of time to establish a foothold. You would also require clear instructions from one managing director and you would want security that you could learn on the job, without an axe constantly hanging over your head.
The ISL teams, because they are so competitive in nature, might not want to give their opponents an inch. However, the chopping and changing might also not yield the desired long-term outcome. It could lead to a lack of confidence among players and while a few extraordinarily talented individuals could get through this trough, the strength of the quorum might not necessarily improve.
Hence, it was quite revealing that Stimac was full of praise for the ISL managers who trusted youngsters, allowed them the luxury of making mistakes and tried to mould them to the best of their abilities. In an unforgiving ISL environment, that is quite tough. But it is also probably the right path moving forward.
This ties up nicely to having more games in a season. That remains the crux of this entire argument. If managers and coaches had more matches, they would also be willing to place faith in younger players. And, most importantly, clubs would, after 8-10 bad performances, not be tempted to pull the trigger and sack managers and players.
It’s possibly something coaches in the ISL have been brooding over, as elucidated by Costa. A solution, despite it being the link between India being just another footballing county and one capable of holding its own, still remains quite a distance away, at least by the looks of it.
“I remember few years ago we had a meeting with all the coaches from all the ISL clubs. Unfortunately, Stimac wasn’t there. This question is not only for the national team coach but for all ISL coaches as well. This is a problem that all the coaches acknowledged. Everyone tried to pitch ideas to make the ISL better. One of the major points was how to have more games. An idea was to have teams play against each other thrice, leading to around 30 games. You can change the things, and it must change. I completely agree with Stimac (on having a bigger season),” Costa added.
So, there are a few things that have become amply clear in the past few days, post Stimac’s admission. The Indian national team, which blazed away to AFC Asian Cup qualification, is where it is because of what the ISL has done since 2014.
Back then, India didn’t have a top-tier competition that could attract big foreign names and could dwarf the bridge between club football and international football. Thus, it was something that was needed at that stage – just to show that India, blessed with all its talent, also had a blueprint to follow.
The ISL, therefore, deserves every bit of credit. But now, the situation is different. India have probably extracted every ounce of benefit from the current iteration of the ISL. With 20 games a season, this is probably the highest ceiling that India can achieve.
That, though, doesn’t mean that India can’t keep scaling newer heights. For that to happen, some changes, as Stimac has claimed, are necessary – changes that might have seemed out of place in 2014 but have become imperative in 2022.
With all that the ISL has done for Indian football, chances are they’ll realise the importance of this particular moment in the country’s footballing history. But every minute that ticks by without any significant change, will feel like a missed opportunity to get India to where they want to be.
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