Indian Football: Roadmap Ahead - How can AIFF make ISL, I-League and National Team better?

#3 Regional Football

The Mizoram Premier League is aired on local Cable TV Channel Zonet TV

The State and Union Territory Football Associations could be divided into 6 geographical zones, with each zone having 5-6 states/UT's (sample shown on page 6). These zones could have zonal leagues, which consist of clubs from second and third tier cities and towns (like Mysuru, Thrissur, Itanagar, Vijayawada), or cities which don't have too much of football history (like Lucknow, Jaipur, Patna etc).

These zones have zonal leagues (say south Indian league, western football league etc), with 8-10 existing state-level clubs participating, and are to run at least from October to April, with an adequate window for regional knockout tournaments for the corresponding area (Puttaiah Memorial Cup in Karnataka, Sikkim Governor's cup, Kashmir Invitational, Rovers Cup of Mumbai etc.)

Regulations must be put in place to ensure professionalism on the club's part by making them handout player contracts, complying with the minimum wages rules of the government. These measures ensure security for lower level players and professionalism in the system.

The main aim of these zonal league and regional cups is to propagate and create an outreach for football in the remote corners of our country and to encourage youngsters in these regions to take up football and to provide a proper grass-root footballing structure to the nation.

Engaging these populations into football, and bringing football to the people will go a long way in making football a mainstream sport in India. These leagues should be marketed intensively on local cable TV channels (as done in Mizoram's MPL), as well as on the streets, using banners and pamphlets in town areas. These leagues should also focus on building quality football pitches in the smaller towns, with all the league and cup games played on at least AIFF standard pitches.

The Zonal leagues could start off as a franchise league involving some big investments and local film stars (as tried in Kerala), and then can gradually focus on becoming more sustainable and flexible, involving relegation. The AIFF, along with the state associations, must invest in these leagues.

Below this league, the amateur leagues involving part-time teams should be in place.

The winning clubs of each of the 6 zonal leagues play a knockout tournament with the last team of the national 2nd division at the end of the season, with the winning team gaining promotion into the 2nd division for the next season. This gives the regional clubs a fair incentive to compete for a good sum of zonal prize money, as well as a place in the top tier system in the country.

Overall league structure:

Proposed League structure for Indian Football

Relegation From Second Division:

The winner of this tournament plays the 2nd division next season

This mini-feature could be called the Stafford Cup, thus reviving another traditional Indian football cup, while maintaining a strict vigil on the number of zonal level clubs playing the 2nd division (which is currently not the case).

This kind of format protects the interest of the FSDL of having a stable closed system while giving semi-pro regional clubs to turn full-time professional.