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The All India Football Federation’s Emergency Committee meeting on Monday decided to change the format of the I-league by introducing a conference system with the I-League split into a West and East Zone. Now I ask myself the question if this step by the national body a step forward for the I-League?
I personally feel a North American ‘Major League Soccer’ styled I-League with the league split into a Western and Eastern Conference of seven to nine clubs in each of the two zones isn’t the way forward for the I-League and Indian football.
The MLS has adopted the conference model from other US professional leagues – NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB. It is part of US sporting culture and has worked for decades with a regular season followed by the play-offs, which rarely exist in the rest of the footballing world.
But could the US model work in India? I personally don’t think so. The reason being that I have grown-up with the European model which is followed by most of the football world with a single league format.
And the AIFF isn’t adopting the model because they think the conference model is the way forward, but it is forced into such a model due to the spiralling costs in organising and running the I-League over a eight/nine month period across the country. The AIFF has to reduce the costs and by having a western and eastern conference they save a lot on travel with Goa/Maharashtra and Kolkata/Northeast sides not having to face each other in the regular season.
But don’t Churchill Brothers vs East Bengal, Dempo vs Mohun Bagan and other matches enhance the charm of the I-league?
As per the new plans the clubs in the west and the east will play out a regular season of home-and-away matches before the top four teams of each conference play out the champions.
I honestly don’t like the conference format and hope that this experiment with the format of the I-League remains a one-year trial and we return to a proper league in the 2014/15 season.
