TEAM HERALD
sports@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: RAJ Gomes, president of Professional I-League Football Clubs Association, expressed happiness that the meeting was held in a cordial, candid and effective manner in which all the points agreed collectively by all I-league clubs in Mumbai earlier, were conveyed to the AIFF.
“While the new format of the Federation Cup on home-and-away basis has been agreed, there was a feeling that the I-League could be retained on old format basis, thus doing away with the new conference (eastern and western) format proposed by AIFF. We hope it will be retained, of course, with certain modifications and conditions including those connected with the finances. It will kick off on September 21 while the Federation Cup could start on October 5,” disclosed RAJ from New Delhi.
“There was no discussion about the proposed IMG-Reliance League from January, thus making the I-League a secondary tournament to a new league. However, we were categorical that should it be held, than the clubs would be free to organise a tournament with matches being played in cities where the IMG-R league matches would not be played. We have to wait for the final decision,” clarified RAJ.
“We stand by our opposition to AIFF’s move to limit the number of teams from a particular region. The owners of the four Goan clubs, namely Churchill Alemao (Churchill Brothers), Shrinivas Dempo (Dempo SC), Shivanand Salgaocar (Salgaocar FC) and Peter Vaz (Sporting Clube de Goa), who had met in Panjim had agreed that a particular city or state mustn’t suffer for being more developed than the rest,” added RAJ, who pointed out that Goa is a State and not a city.
While IMG-Reliance is keen on starting a new tournament next January along the lines of Indian Premier League (IPL), the I-League clubs are expected to stick to the decisions arrived at the Mumbai meeting including that none of the clubs from the top division shall deal with any player associated with the new tournament. “The IPL-style tournament will make life difficult for clubs. We were unanimous in our decision not to have any links with the new tournament, and we wouldn’t deal with any players associated with IMG-Reliance’s initiative, and should they decide to reverse their decision too, the said players will stand to miss out on the I-League in the latter half of the season,” a club official stressed. Another official said that the matter of window period for the new league needed be examined.
RAJ while stating that the clubs had asked the AIFF not to raise the affiliation fee from Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh since the hike was too steep, opined that the meeting was a fruitful one and that the association was looking for the AIFF to make all issues clear shortly.
Meanwhile, a team of AIFF’s commercial partners, Reliance IMG, is expected to be in Kolkata to have a meeting with Bengal’s state football association IFA and the state ministry regarding the proposed IPL-style tournament.
The new league will be contested among eight city-based franchises, and IMG-R are targeting ten centers as they cannot be certain about the infrastructure of every venue. IMG-R have contacted state associations in five centers – Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Kochi. Kolkata is next in line with Goa following thereafter as IMG-R’s long-term plan is to transform some of the existing stadiums, which they will be booking and refurbishing for the tournament, into complete football venues.
Although details about many venues in different cities have been discussed by IMG-R with various state associations and state ministries, no stadium has been officially booked yet.
Each city-based franchise will be registered with a particular state association so the name of the Kolkata franchise will also be discussed with the IFA. Besides Kolkata, IMG-R are yet to have a physical meeting in Chennai and they won’t be visiting Goa until the conclusion of the Lusofonia Games in Goa in November.
Sources stated that IMG-R are eager to sit down with I-League clubs and resolve the issue of not releasing players. But first they intend to make some progress of their own with regards to their newly proposed tournament like booking venues, registering the franchises, finalising the format, etc so that there is more clarity about the event.
