Goal.com

24-Jun-2012 5:40:00 PM

Goal.com's Ayush Srivastava has a look at one of AIFF's prime "constitutional" objectives and wonders whether the federation has come anywhere close to fulfilling it....

Over the past few days, as a part of the AIFF’s Platinum Jubilee “celebrations”, Goal.com has come up with several articles, wondering what exactly is there to celebrate.

It was while looking for the same reason that we happened to browse through the All India Football Federation (AIFF) Constitution, or the book according to which the AIFF is supposed to function.

And therein we came across one of the objectives that left us dumb-founded. It mentioned that one of the aims of the federation is, “To improve and popularize the game of football constantly and promote it throughout India in the light of its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values, particularly through youth and development programmes in urban, rural and remote areas including Schools, Colleges and Universities.”

The last line has been highlighted in particular, because it leaves one thinking as to when was the last time that we saw a tournament held by AIFF for School, College or Universities?

Still scratching your head over it?!

Not Enough Chances To Make Their Academy Proud...

Forget schools and colleges, the few academies that India does have, the heads of those academies too constantly complain about how the lack of proper competitive tournaments inhibit the growth of their wards.

At the moment, there are very few tournaments held by AIFF at the youth level, the notable ones being  the U-19 B.C Roy Trophy, the U-14 Mir Iqbal Hussain trophy and the U-21 Dutta Ray Trophy, providing limited scope for youngsters to shine on the national stage and generally leave a lot to be desired for, as these few are just not good enough to help improve the player pool at the youth level in India at the moment.

Most of the clubs in India do not even have a completely dedicated youth academy, and why should they? Considering that the U-19 I-League tournament lasts for a few weeks, and for the rest of the year the teams are only expected to train! What's the incentive for the clubs to spend their money on youngsters when there are no proper competitions held.

While there are a few tournaments coming up under private sponsorship, none of them as such are affiliated to the AIFF, so has the federation been able to accomplish its objective?

There has been a lot of hue and cry recently about the new academies coming up in India and the structure being implemented under Rob Baan, but is just having academies enough? In a country of over a billion people, will having a few academies under the AIFF flagship suffice? Even to choose the players for the academy, the AIFF learnt that most of the selected lot were overage which isn't something happening for the first time in the country.

Just Training Is Not Enough. More Tournaments Are Needed...

Where do the players in these institution compete? Or will as usual the association hand-pick a select lot and send them abroad for training? How then do we intend to build a pool of truly talented players ready to fight for a spot in the national team?

While building full purpose academies is a good idea, not only does the federation need to start inducting kids at a younger age than they already do, but also give them the correct platform to test and improve themselves by playing against players of the same level regularly.

Tournaments across age levels at district, state and national levels at regular intervals are the need of the hour, as only then will the AIFF be able to fulfill one of its objectives to “To improve and popularize the game of football constantly and promote it throughout India”, and then we might perhaps have something to celebrate about.

Follow Ayush Srivastava on