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Indian Professional Football Clubs Association (IPFCA) have decided in a meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday that no I-League club will release players on loan for the IMG Reliance’s proposed IPL-style football tournament, to be held early next year.
All I-League clubs, barring Pailan Arrows (Sporting Clube also didn’t have any representative but have conveyed their support for any decision or recommendation), including newly promoted Mohammedan Sporting and Rangdajied United along with newly included JSW and Mumbai Tigers have also unanimously decided not to sign any players who will be contracted to play in the IMG-R tournament.
For weeks, the representatives of the IPFCA had been saying that they won’t allow any of their players to be part of the new tournament that IMG-R are planning to stage in January-February 2014. Finally, on Wednesday, a decision was taken in a meeting that was chaired by IPFCA president and Salgaocar General Secretary Raj Gomes.
The decision to not sign any players who have agreed to play in IMG-R’s tournament will be a massive talking point if the clubs are able to stick to it, because several high profile India internationals like Subrata Pal, Gouramangi Singh, Syed Rahim Nabi have already agreed to play in the new competition.
One of the representatives at the meeting told Sportskeeda, “We will also not be signing any player who requests for any release clause for any tournament.”
On Sunday, Sportskeeda had revealed IPFCA’s plan to organise a tournament of their own during the I-League break when the IPL-style tournament will be in action. In Wednesday’s meeting, all members proposed a new tournament in that period.
“We will discuss with the AIFF if they can provide us any alternative in that period because more than being affected by the IMG-R tournament, we don’t want our players to sit idle during the break. We will either stage our own tournament or play in existing competitions like the IFA Shield or the Rovers Cup which could be revived this time,” the representative, who is also a club official, added.
United against conference system
The clubs also want the existing I-League and Federation Cup format to continue and are thus against the newly proposed conference style league in which teams would be divided into two zones. The emergency committee of the AIFF also proposed a change in the Federation Cup, to make it into a tournament that runs during the I-League on a home and away format, but IPFCA is against that also.
“We want clarification from the AIFF as to how a conference style I-League will be economically beneficial,” the club official further stated.
The IPFCA are also going to propose to the AIFF that all clubs should be taken into consideration while any decisions are taken in any executive committee meeting. The I-League clubs’ body also added in a press release that they are yet to receive the final calendar for the 2013-14 season.
