The Goa Football Association (GFA) must take a long, hard look at its product the Goa Professional League (GPL).
Into its 25th year, the league incepted in 1998 to consolidate the rich legacy of football in the State, finds itself at sixes and sevens.
Rocked by match-fixing allegations, mired in controversy over rulings concerning relegation and debilitated by down-sizing after three of its leading clubs withdrew from the I-League, the GFA must introspect and draw upon the will to effect much-needed change to its product.
“Professional” it may be called but ground reality suggests the league is anything but. For starters, how many of the 12-strong clubs in what’s the top tier of football league in Goa actually conform to the basics of professional football?
For one thing, the Indian club licensing criteria is scarcely followed across the league. So how does the GPL live up to the tag, given that a set of five criteria forms the building blocks of a professional league?
One of the five is the Sporting criteria which is by far the most rudimentary – it stipulates that registered players must have a written contract with the club that specifies wages and the time period of an agreement between the two parties.
Other criteria include those pertaining to infrastructure — the club’s ownership of a guaranteed access to an office space to conduct administration. The third calls for personnel and administration by which a full time CEO, general manager or general secretary takes care of club affairs.
Then there’s also a legal criterion that ensures that the club should be fully responsible to exclusively run a football team. And, last, but by no means least, the financial criterion that stipulates auditing of accounts by statutory auditors.
All five criteria, specified in the Indian Club Licensing regulations, influence the development of the sport but those relating to sporting, legal and financial aspects are of crucial importance.
Alberto Colaco, former All India Football Federation (AIFF) and GFA general secretary and former chairman of the National Football League which eventually evolved into the I-League, goes down memory lane to the inception of the of GPL.
“When the GPL started, clubs needed to have at least five professional players who would hold contracts with the clubs,” he said. “There were six teams in all and three to four of those were in the I-League.”
The player contract stipulation has been loosely followed over the years, according to Colaco, but as long as the I-League was in the frame, players had a pathway to higher echelons.
“Salaries were decent then but now the Indian Super League (ISL) promises far more in terms of remuneration,” Colaco said. For the GPL to live up to its tag, he stressed on the need to stick to the club licensing criteria
A generation later, save corporate entities such as Dempo and Salgaocar, most clubs scarcely follow the criteria.
As per AIFF regulations on the status and transfers of players, a professional is a player who has a written contract with a club and is paid more for his footballing activity than the expenses he effectively incurs. All other players are considered to be amateurs.
The very term “professional” pertains to a sole occupation and livelihood. For a demanding competitive sport like football, players must be in a position to take care of their physical and mental wellbeing. In real terms, they must have financial resources for their upkeep.
Seven out of 12 clubs in the GPL are registered under the companies act. These include Dempo FC, Salgaocar FC, Sporting Clube de Goa, Churchill Brothers, Sesa FA, Vasco and FC Goa (Reserves). The other five – Velsao Sports and Cultural Club, Guardian Angel, Calangute Association, Panjim Footballers and Youth Club of Manora have done so under the 1860 Societies Act. The former boosted by commercial entities are better placed in their quest for professionalism but the lower rung teams struggle to make ends meet. Velsao Sports and Cultural Club, running the gauntlet of financial difficulties and ambitions to stay afloat in the GPL, endured a complaint to the AIFF by players whose salaries weren’t paid.
“We eventually cleared two months’ pending salaries,” said Terence Freitas, club secretary, who says finance is a perennial problem, something that typifies the plight of lower-rung outfits in the GPL.
There was even talk of a club that pays players a mere Rs 1,000 per match, a pittance that push players to the precipice – a breeding ground for match-fixing for which allegations have reached a crescendo.
GFA’s integrity partners, Genius Sports, red flagged six Goa Pro league matches in 10 days in March 2022 for suspicious betting patterns. It was a slap in the face of GFA who referred the allegations to the Police but its ethics committee still labours to identify the offenders, if the allegations are true, and take punitive measures.
In the meantime, the league suffered a double whammy with the abandonment of sponsors.
Along with match-fixing allegations came Goa’s defeat to Gujarat in the 2021 Santosh Trophy qualifiers, a veritable shock to the system and raised question marks over the future of football that was declared the state sport by the late Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.
Even as the din of the ISL reaches fever pitch with FC Goa captivating audiences young and old, the result against Gujarat suggested that football in the state had reached its nadir.
Alarm bells rang out the need for change. The GFA at its Executive Committee meeting in July 2022 resolved to enforce the licensing criteria for clubs.
According to Jonathan De Sousa, an executive committee member, it was resolved at the meeting that there be at least 10 contracted players to a club and remuneration of not less than Rs 8,000 towards amateur players.
“The Club Licensing Criteria has been approved by the Executive Committee and has been circulated to all the clubs via email. The same will be discussed at the Manager’s meeting where all clubs would meet.
“It will take some time to implement and clubs can apply for a one-season exemption to enable them to get their structure in place and comply with all criteria,” said De Sousa.
Clubs on a good wicket, like the corporate entities, could well meet the criteria without much ado but how the others would is anyone’s guess. The two high flyers hold an optimistic though cautious view of the GPL.
Shivanand Salgaocar, president of Salgaocar Football Club, said, “The GPL gives players an opportunity to display their wares in a competitive environment.
Salgaocar, one of three clubs to quit the I-League in 2016 for the failure of the AIFF to provide an effective roadmap for the sport in the wake of the inception of the ISL, are last year’s runners-up.
Salgaocar, for one, doesn’t believe that the pullout from the I-League has resulted in drastic downsizing of the GPL.
“True, the withdrawal of our club along with two others from the I-League affected about 50 percent of the 90 players involved and although it did result in significant downsizing of the GPL, the league still serves its purpose,” he added.
Salgaocar cited the case of Liston Colaco, a winger, who made his way through the ranks from a 14-year-old in the age group leagues through the GPL, to FC Goa and eventually to Hyderabad and ATK Mohun Bagan in the ISL.
“He eventually signed up for Rs 1 cr which is remarkable. His journey through the GPL counted,” Salgaocar affirmed.
He said there’s no let-up on efforts to go one better than runners-up position his club achieved last year even as he offered a bit of advice to enhance the league.
“The GFA should draw up a calendar well in advance after consulting the clubs and should stick to it,” Salgaocar said.
Shrinivas Dempo, president, Dempo Football Club, the defending champions, isn’t dissatisfied with the GPL but believes it could be taken to a higher level.
“After the GPL, you could run a Super Cup with invitations sent out to teams from outside,” he said. “ISL teams are struggling to get good pre-season match practice and would relish the idea of participating in such a competition with, say, the top three sides in the GPL.
“It could also help increase GFA revenue which in turn would reach the players.”
Dempo too refutes the notion that the GPL was downsized after his club along with Salgaocar and Sporting Clube de Goa pulled out of the I-League in 2016 which was made the second tier to the ISL in the national framework with no promotion rights.
There’s a glimmer of hope for Churchill Brothers to make the top tier – the ISL – in a pathway tweaked by the AIFF to promote the I-League champions this season.
The Salcete outfit who arguably sowed the seeds of professionalism in the 1990s with their owner Churchill Alemao, also the GFA President, investing heavily in star players, many of them foreigners.
Alemao, whose tenure as president has drawn a law suit after the implementing of the Sports Code barring officer bearers over 70 years of age, has vowed to better the lot of the GPL.
“I will do my best to find a sponsor for the GPL in the time remaining for the next GFA elections (by the end of October 2022),” Alemao said.
Alemao says he feels for clubs struggling in the GPL in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic that has caused them severe financial hardship and has pledged to distribute a Rs 50 lakh grant promised by the Goa Chief Minister over 182 clubs the length and breadth of Goa.
As the new season beckons there’s no confirmation of the fixtures nor indeed the solution to a relegation issue involving the Youth Club of Manora who have taken legal recourse after protesting against their demotion from the GPL.
The traditional Charity Match between defending champions Dempo and runners-up Salgaocar is slated for August 15 followed by GPL’s opening fixture September 10.
If a host of resolutions – including that of the minimum player wage — become a reality, the GPL holds promise of living up to its essence in its silver jubilee year.
