The All India Football Federation was looking for a new General Secretary last year after Alberto Colaco had informed that he wanted to see out his tenure and then hand over the position to someone younger to shape the future of the federation. In June 2009 the AIFF placed ads in newspaper and publicised it on their own website that the federation was looking for a new General Secretary inviting applications.
Alberto Colaco
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Close to 40 applications were received and after scrutiny the list was cut down to nine, but there were no Interviews ! No reason was given ! and Mr. Colaco’s tenure was extended by 13 months until the end of the Asian Cup 2011 in January next year. That was all in August and September 2009.
Now nearly a year later things have picked up again. Sources close to the positions of power say that Praful Patel wants a new secretary to take over from Mr. Colaco and therefore got a head hunter company involved to give the AIFF top brass some options on who could be appointed as new AIFF General Secretary.
But surprisingly none of the old names made it to the new candidates list and no reason was once again given for this decision. Capable candidates like Savio Messias, Goa Football Association secretary; and Dr. Shaji Prabhakaran, formerly with the AIFF as Director for Vision Program and National team; are off the list due to the fact that they aren’t to the liking of some AIFF officials. The first two new names who have been linked with the General Secretary job are Kushal Das andBiswajit Mitra, who on Wednesday appeared in front of the emergency committee to present themselves. And one has to question their football pedigree to take-up the key job in Indian football.
Kushal Das last was the CFO of the ICC, the governing body of cricket, after having worked for sports management firm IMG. Biswajit Mitra meanwhile has been the head of the International Business section at Tata Steel, Kolkata. The question is simple. Where is the football link of these gentlemen? Do they know what is happening with Indian and international football at the moment. I certainly have my doubts about that. So the question which comes to mind is, is someone placing a person as the new General Secretary? If yes, why? Surely not in the interest of Indian football. We should better watch out and hopefully the media keeps a track of things.
