What's the story?
The AIFF has announced that there will be no ISL and I-League merger next season according to reports emanating from various media houses in India. The Indian Super League, which will be stepping into its fourth season next year will instead be played across seven months according to the reports with games being played on the weekends.
“I-League will remain the official league, while the Indian Super League will be expanded into a seven-month long tournament to be played on the weekends. There will be no unified league. We will take a call after two-three years," said a source close to the PTI.
In case you didn't know...
The future of the Indian domestic football scene has been up in arms in recent times following the inception of the ISL three years ago. The AIFF has time and again tried to promote the ISL as the premier footballing tournament in India and get recognised by FIFA.
It was earlier being mooted that the ISL would be an 11-team event in 2017 with Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Bengaluru FC joining the league from the I-League.
AIFF President Praful Patel also heard presentations from East Bengal and Mohun Bagan regarding the matter.
The heart of the matter
The so-called merger of the two leagues and the way forward for Indian football has been a contentious issue for quite some time and has been the elephant in the room in Indian football for a while now.
When a proposed roadmap was presented by the AIFF and IMG-Reliance at the beginning of the year, it was met with strong protests as many I-League clubs claimed the ‘merger’ to be nothing more than a hostile takeover with the ISL being promoted as the main league of India.
This was soon followed by the withdrawal of Sporting Clube de Goa, Salgaocar and Dempo from the 2016/17 I-League earlier this season.
The issue got more muddled in recent times after a senior official of the AIFF suggested that newly crowned champions Aizawl FC might have to play in the second division next season.
What’s next?
Aizawl had officially announced that they would escalate matters to the extent of going on a hunger strike if they were forced to play in the second tier next season. And this news should be music to the ears of the club and all of North East football.
The AIFF and IMG-Reliance are also set to look for an additional place in the AFC Cup next season.
Author’s Take
This is certainly an interesting development. With the expansion of the league to seven months, it will certainly be interesting to see what kind of talent ISL can pull off. The longer period of play means that not only will the ISL have to pay the players for a much longer period of time, the operation cost of the whole league will also skyrocket.
This is a move by AIFF which eventually can serve both their purposes of promoting ISL as the premier competition (without naming it so) whilst also appeasing the likes of Aizawl who wanted to play in the first tier of Indian football. However, this will have far deeper connotations.
With both the tournaments running at the same time and ISL pulling the punches in terms of financial strength, the players will more likely opt to play in the ISL rather than the I-League. This will result in an I-League bereft of talent and being downgraded as the second division of Indian while being given the stature of the premier football league.
