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#3 Lack of women's football teams and clubs
Since 1991, the top women's football tournament in India has been the Indian Women's Football Championship. The tournament served as a female equivalent of the Santosh Trophy, with states competing against each other.
There had never been an organized national football league for women. However, leagues were started by state associations for women. The first women's state football league was set up in 1976 in Manipur. The Indian Football Association of West Bengal founded the Calcutta Women's League in 1993. Leagues were also started in Mumbai and Goa in 1998 and 1999 respectively.
The UEFA and the CONMEBOL are the only Continental Football Federations to have a professional continental club competition in the form of the UEFA Women's Champions League and the Copa Libertadores Femenina.
AFC, on the other hand, does not have any women club competition and hence the AFC Nations are not under considerable pressure to have a dedicated women's league in order to comply with the AFC regulations.
India, being famous for doing the minimum just to comply with certain regulations, did not pay heed to conduct a women's league until recent times.
The state football championships for women did provide some much-needed exposure to the girls, but the quality and the professionalism were below par. After the success of Indian clubs in Asian Level and the immense fanfare rising due to the Indian Super League, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) tried to launch a women's football competition on the lines of Indian Super League and the I-League.
The Indian Women's League (IWL) came into existence in 2016 in a single-venue (New Delhi) event. On 24 January 2017, AIFF launched the first ever women’s professional league with six teams. The participating teams - FC Alakhpura (Haryana), Jeppiaar Institute of Technology FC (Puducherry), Aizawl FC (Women) (Mizoram), FC Pune City (Women) (Maharashtra), Rising Student Club (Odisha) and Eastern Sporting Union (Manipur) play each other in a round-robin format with the top four teams advancing to the semifinals.
The newly formed league was live streamed on the official Indian Football Team page and attracted ample amount of crowds to the Ambedkar Stadium, New Delhi.
This was a great initiative by AIFF and attracted several media houses to the stadium which increased the brand value of the women footballers in India. The delay of launching a National League for women has cost us huge in International stage and in terms of popularizing the game among the feminine gender as well.
The league needs to reach out to more teams in India and must be held in other zones too. The preliminary rounds of the 2017-18 Edition were held in Kolhapur, Maharashtra which was a good sign and needs to be continued.
The lack of domestic clubs and teams in women's football has hampered its growth and more clubs need to come up and provide chances for aspiring girls to help them pursue their footballing dreams.
