After FC Goa lost in the dying minutes of the 2015 Indian Super League (ISL) final in December last, the beautiful game has been going downhill in the State. But it has not been because of the quality of football, but because the game’s administrators have been playing a game that is not beautiful. The bad news first came in when the All India Football Federation imposed a Rs 50 lakh fine on FC Goa for the ISL final fiasco. That stunned quite a few in the State, but nobody was prepared for the Rs 11 crore fine and ban on the co-owners of the club from even entering the stadium that came weeks later and was imposed by the ISL Regulatory Commission.
As if that was not enough, last week the news got even worse. Salgaocar FC and Sporting Clube de Goa announced their withdrawal from the forthcoming season of the I-League, the game’s premier league in the country. With this not only has Goan football taken a beating, but the country’s premier football league has lost much of its sheen. The two teams decided to opt out of the league over the All India Football Federation’s decision to restructure the system in the country that would recognise the ISL as the premier league and relegate the I-League to the second tier. Salgaocar and Sporting are not the only two clubs who will stay away from the I-League. They could be joined by Dempo SC whose chairman has admitted that he is mulling the possibility of joining the other two Goan clubs in the pullout. That could mean that the next I-League will not have a single Goan team playing.
Goan clubs have brought upon the I-League a lustre that clubs from no other State have been able to. Salgaocar and Sporting are absolutely right when they say that the AIFF proposal is ‘highly discriminatory, goes against sporting merit, is unworkable for I-League clubs and hampers Goa, which is the best represented State in the I-League, the most’. Goa, at one point of time, had six teams playing in the National Football League that was the forerunner to the I-League. Goan clubs have also won more I-League titles than clubs from all other States that are represented in the league. Goan clubs won the first six of the nine editions of the I-League, with Dempo taking the title thrice, Churchill Brothers twice and Salgaocar once. Now in 2016, there may be not even a single Goan team in the I-League.
The two clubs make a pertinent point in their arguments when they state that relegating the I-League to the second tier and doing away with promotion makes the system biased against the I-League, which gives more weight to a club with a franchise fee than to footballing merit. Entry into the ISL is by bidding so the team winning the I-League would not get the opportunity to play in it. What is the purpose of a football league if it does not promote the top team of that tier to the upper tier? Such a league ends up being merely a tournament with the winning club taking home a trophy. AIFF’s new proposals have managed to reduce the I-League to one such a tournament.
Before announcing the proposal to relegate the I-League to the second tier, AIFF should have taken into consideration that the I-League is far different from the ISL and how this would affect the teams that are playing in it. The Goan teams have withdrawn, but other teams too have shown that they are not too happy with the AIFF decision. There could still be others pulling out.
Goans, however, will still see their favourite teams and players on the field as the teams will continue to play in other tournaments in the country and the league at home.
