As Indian football enters a transition phase, the future is uncertain for its regional leagues

On May 17, the All India Football Federation, along with its commercial partners IMG-Reliance, proposed before its stakeholders a roadmap designed to spread the sport in every nook and corner of the country and help the national team climb up the Fifa ranking ladder.

As part of the plan, all the Indian Super League sides would be accommodated in the top flight championship of the nation and there would be three tiers in the league structure, with the top two getting regular television coverage.

Supporters and critics of this plan differ mainly on a single point – the treatment of the legacy I-League clubs of India, which were subject to much fanfare till a few years ago, but now face a hard time to lure sponsors. The debate has been centered mostly on the inclusion of the Kolkata giants East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, while milder demands about ensuring Salgaocar and Sporting Clube de Goa’s interests also made the rounds.

However, with three pan-Indian competitions set to commence from the 2017-'18 football season, the real losers in the process could be the popular state leagues, which have, for years, played a major role in nurturing young talent. On the other hand, the beautiful game may earn new devotees in terra incognita – mostly comprising the Hindi speaking states.

Regional leagues identified talent

Before the introduction of the National Football League in 1996, there was no year-long national level competition in India and the four cups – IFA Shield, Rovers Cup, Durand Cup and Federation Cup – used to be the blue ribbon events of the domestic calendar. The state leagues had a big part to play in the national team’s success stories in those times.

Discovering new talent had never been on the top of the priority list of many renowned Indian clubs, who have mostly relied upon the likes of Tata Football Academy in the last couple of decades to do the scouting and develop the youngsters. Quality grassroots coaching is hard to come by and before the introduction of club licensing criteria, the sides usually gave this aspect a cold shoulder.

While it took East Bengal 96 years since its foundation to open its own academy, Mohun Bagan’s academy in Durgapur has produced only one national team footballer. Salgaocar has been one of the forerunners on this front, but they also kick-started the initiative only after the turn of the century.

While many fledgling stars were not even spotted, talented teenage footballers who were nurtured by the academies enjoyed very limited playing time as the AIFF launched the U-19 national league only in 2011.

Amidst this nonchalance, the handful of popular regional leagues played a pivotal role to provide the new faces with their moments of glory, mainly during the matches against the well-known clubs. For example this season, the likes of Kaushik Sarkar (Sports Authority of India), Arjun Tudu (Army XI) and Nicholas Fernades (Churchill Brothers) broke into the national scene after their impressive outings in the regional leagues. While Sarkar and Tudu were called up in the national camp ahead of last year’s SAFF Championship, Fernandes was loaned to Sporting Clube de Goa and finished as the highest U-22 scorer in the I-League.

Despite experiencing dwindling crowds over the years, the state leagues often trump the pan-Indian tournaments in terms of glamour, media coverage and, most importantly, quality of football. For example, when East Bengal played their first match of the campaign against fellow Kolkata side Tollygunge Agragami last season, more than 16,000 people attended the fixture, which was a few thousand more than the number of fans who remained witness to Bengaluru FC’s national league winning encounter against Salgaocar in early April. Any ardent follower of football would agree that the television coverage of Mizoram Premier League and Calcutta Football League are much better than the shoddy production of the I-League afternoon kick-offs.

Taking the game elsewhere

However, with the big teams concentrating more on national level contests from this season, these competitions are set to lose the gloss. Mohun Bagan, for example has already announced that they will not play a full strength side in this year’s Calcutta Football League, one of the most followed football competitions of the country. This is obviously a pragmatic move by the outfit, following the footsteps of Bengaluru FC, who have used mostly reserve players in the Bangalore District Football Association (BDFA) league. With the big clubs choosing to play second string squads, the next generation of players will have little opportunity of playing against the mightier opponents unless they get really lucky and are roped in by the top division sides.

However, one big positive point about the new plan is that the third division will try to include teams from regions like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh – states that have never been part of the country’s football elite. The incentive of playing at a national level can inspire potential sponsors to pump money into the game in these regions, where the game has never really had any footprint.

In a nutshell, as Indian football gets ready to enter the transition phase, the jury is still out on whether the plan to include newer clubs in the fray at the expense of more loyal ones will actually pay dividends.

Atanu Mitra has been covering Indian football for more than four years. He tweets @Atanu00.