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Indian football has taken a lot of new turns in the last few years. The facilities surrounding the game have indeed improved manifold. It is because of these improvements that we are now seeing our country get the opportunity to host so many top International tournaments, and it all started with the FIFA U-17 World Cup India 2017.
On top of that, with tournaments like the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup 2022, the AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2022 to be held in India, football is set to be further celebrated in India. This is a big improvement over what the footballers back in my playing days could avail. In addition, we are also officially bidding to host the AFC Asian Cup in 2027. Surely a sign of progress.
On the domestic front, the three-tier league system that we have – the Hero ISL, the Hero I-League and the Hero Second Division League has acted as a good ecosystem to propel many talented players to the top. However, as we move into this new era of Indian football, we must also note areas that can contribute to the cause on a larger scale. I am speaking, of course, about the local state leagues.
The state leagues are an absolute asset to Indian football. We often talk about how places like Goa, Kolkata, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Kerala, Karnataka, Mumbai, and many others are various pockets that are essentially hubs of Indian football. It is the well-run state leagues that have allowed these areas to become such hubs. And if you look at the ‘new normal,’ the State League at Himachal Pradesh has already kicked-off.
That is where a young gun gets the experience and a feel of what he is going to face in coming years. When I was a youngster, it was because of the local leagues that I gained the crucial experience of playing in a senior team. The discipline, the nuances, the tactical and technical aspect of playing in the senior football – these were all things that I learnt during my teenage days.
Of course I made mistakes. But I learnt from them, and then when I finally got the chance to play in the NFL and later in the National team, I had amassed a lot of good playing time under my belt to actually compete and prevail at a higher level for a long time.
What we are trying to do with the Indian Arrows in the Hero I-League and the IFA Shield is quite similar – giving the boys the experience of playing at the senior level – all in an endeavour to make them learn from their mistakes. That’s our effort to take Indian Football Forward Together. It is from here that they will move onto the Hero ISL or the Hero I-League and eventually vie for a slot in the National Team.
We are already seeing the results in the form of some of the past Arrows boys like Amarjit Singh, Narender Gahlot, Suresh Wangjam, Ninthoi, Akash Mishra, Rahul KP, and many others. All of these guys took as much valuable experience of playing in the Hero I-League as they could, and are now doing well in the Hero ISL as well. Not to forget the first two batches of Arrows which gave us Gurpreet Sandhu, Jeje Lalpekhlua, Pritam Kotal, Pronoy Halder, Halicharan Narzary amongst others.
Another former Arrows cadet who had impressed last season was Nikhil Raj. While many of the junior boys take some time to get used to the rigours of the level off football in the Hero I-League or the Hero ISL, he adapted quickly, because he had already clocked a lot of game time in the top divisions of the Bangalore Super Division.
However, the Arrows is just one team. We select the best players from the country in the junior age groups and give them the experience. What about the rest? Should the future of Indian football be restricted to just 30-odd kids?
This is where the importance of the state leagues come in. If I take Kolkata as an example, of course there are the Big Three clubs. But they regularly compete in a league against the local clubs who are constantly trying to get the better of them. Peerless winning the CFL last season was a testament to that fact.
Even now, after so many months of lockdown, when we play teams like Southern Samity in the IFA Shield, you can see the tactical discipline that their players possess – and that is not something you would find often in junior football. This tactical discipline comes from playing against quality opponents in the CFL.
Mizoram is a brilliant example of the same. It is because of the well-run state league that we saw Aizawl FC break into the Hero I-League, which they eventually won in the 2016-17 season.
Since then, the crème de la crème of the MPL have progressed through to Aizawl FC, where they get a chance to perform in the Hero I-League. Subsequently, their performance for Aizawl propels them further to the Hero ISL and to the National Team. We have so many players from Mizoram in the Hero ISL, and that is a testament to the quality of the MPL. There are even so many Hero I-League and Hero ISL clubs that send their scouts to these well-run local leagues to find young talented players.
