#TFGinterview: FC Pune City CEO Modwel on football club sustainability, closed merged league

THE OCCASION WAS the launch of a FC Pune City's new co-owner and brand ambassador at a hotel in Mumbai. On October 26, Arjun Kapoor was announced as the new face of the Pune-based Indian Super League franchise.

Gaurav Modwel, the CEO of the team, introduced the new brand ambassador and co-owner to the media present. The Fan Garage, too present among the invitees, had a conversation with Gaurav Modwel on host of topics from a look-back at a successful year with the youth teams to building infrastructure for continued development and discussion on the way forward for Indian football in the coming years.

FC Pune City had an eventful last year starting with their Under 11 team winning the Adidas Uprising Tournament, the Under 18 team won the IFA Shield and the Women's team also won trophies. Taking pride on the achievements by the youth teams, Modwel expressed,

"It's part of our philosophy. Right from the beginning we were very keen on putting out our youth teams. We have our residential academy, maintain and run about four pitches to be able to have the infrastructure to do it. The under 18, in the regional rounds out of 8 we won 7 and drew one. In the U18 national league we just lost one game"

Going on to talk about how the team has done more than just winning trophies,

"The part that gives me thrills is where the Under-18 boys are right now. About four or five are in the Indian Super League with us, two in the main and two in the reserve. Three boys are going on loan to Chennai City, Yasir has gone to FC Goa on loan in the ISL, another one Chesterpaul Lyngdoh who has gone to Mohun Bagan. About five boys will be part of the reserves of Bengaluru and Kerala. Three of our own are also part of the India Under-19 squad that will be playing the AFC qualifiers. So from one team we are feeding, I-League, India Under-19 and our own team as well"

FCPC has participated in the local tournament this year. Asked if there has been an increase in the number of local talent and native children joining the teams, Modwel replied saying that is a bigger challenge and with time there will be a rise in number of players from Maharashtra and Pune as well.

The success of Pune City's academy could be attributed to the academy of Pune FC which they took over after Pune FC shut down. Modwel did acknowledge the contribution of the Pune FC's academy and added that many changes were made to the academy after they took over. He shared,

"Yes definitely! There are still lot of those boys from the academy. We brought in some boys from the AIFF setup and there are boys that we scouted in a very short time. For example Gani was not playing for any academy when we scouted him. The fact is the Pune FC set up did help us a lot."

Modwel added,

"We made lot of changes like getting in UEFA Pro coach Roger Lamesa and the kind of tie ups and physical training we had, we tried taking it the next level"

The team met up with the fan club Orange Army recently and he shared the experience of seeing the fan club grow over the years. He said,

"Orange Army is like family to us. The first time we met them it was just 21 people there now they are in thousands. The core group has also grown. Recently what we have done is, we have started aligning ourselves with supporters fan club of Europeans clubs and they are seeing merit is having their own club at the city level"

He went on to add,

"Lot of football fans in India are La Liga and English Premier league fans. These fans are far off from the real feel of the game and miss the connect with your own city club. Going to matches and seeing players is what many of these fans have not experienced. And that is the role we are playing with Arjun Kapoor on board with us. He says come to the stadium and start enjoying that atmosphere"

FC Pune City made a strategic tie-up with Chanmari FC from Aizawl in the month of May, this year. We enquired about the activities that have happened in that regard in about five months since the tie-up.

"The association has been fruitful till now. Within a few months, we have already signed two players from there, a midfielder and a striker, Joe and Jacob . It is a two-way process, we help them get better coaches and support them by doing larger scouting. Since they become a feeder, they are getting in much better players in Chanmari. For example, the player we signed Joe, he was playing for Shillong Lajong Under 18 last season. He moved to Chanmari because he saw they club feeding to FC Pune City."

Talking on the effect India hosting the Under 17 World Cup will have on the country, the CEO in his opening speech of the day mentioned the attendance is set to be the highest ever in history and shed light further on the topic saying,

"It is a shot in the arm. I heard for the semi final between Spain and Mali had upwards of 35,000 people. Now that says a lot for a World Cup game where India had lost earlier in the tournament. These events do bolster and bring the community together. It’s a long-drawn sustained effort to achieve a revolution to get better infrastructure, coaches. It is not a day's work. It is not a pill that one takes and it starts taking an effect to make India a footballing nation. It is a long process"

CEO Modwel continued to talk about the change needed after the World Cup,

"We used to be so good in football in the 50's and 60's and something happened to us. Professionalism went out, we never invested in the sport, the interest started coming down, nepotism kicked in, corruption came in, players were not treated well. Apathy for such a long period has lead us the situation where we are. Salaries of players have to go up. Now we have 150-170 players earning that number should up"

To a thought of seeing more teams playing in the top division to see more development, he answered,

"If it happens then it's great. The I-League needs more investment to make it happen, more professionalism by not just a few but all teams. For ISL to expand there are many people and if it were to be the top tier, if can expanding to 14 or 16 teams. I can start pointing at fingers at all stakeholders. Like fans can pick up Rs 500 rupee tickets and flock in the stadium in numbers so the club also has more money. If the fans don’t find it exciting, the cycle doesn't start. Clubs don’t have enough money to get in good players and can't pay. So the juniors don't want to become footballers because they don't see much money and as a viable career option"

Coming to the major topic on whether the unified league should be an open with promotion / relegation or a closed system, Modwel had some interesting things to share.

"An investment is very important. The investment will only come if you give some kind of a period for a club to continue in that league. If it can fall down and go out then why should be an investment? Today there are hardly any revenues, it's all a one way investment coming from the corporates. If I come to you and ask you to invest a small sum and if you don’t see that investment returning you in a few years, why will you invest?"

Continuing on the promotion and relegation discussion, Modwel suggested few of his ideas stating,

"Considering there is a top league, named whatever you want. If you want people to invest it should have some kind of a safeguard. Now how do you give the second tier a chance to perform and move up? There are ways I have suggested in the past, you could do a qualifying tournament. Say top tier has 12 teams, two have come up from the second division and other 10 have a safeguard. The top two teams from the second tier can play two teams from the top tier who do not have a safeguard. So the two teams that come through in this qualifying, you give them some parachute money to bolster their team in order to compete"

"Hypothetically speaking say one day all clubs are put in unified league. One month later when reality hits you what do you do when the money is be put in? It is not that everyone is earning a lot through football or ISL league owners are making huge money, even they are in losses. There is a cost associated with conducting these leagues. It's always been said that Star Sports is making money with the broadcast and not passing it on. Someone has to do some research about at what price are the spots getting sold and who is buying, is the corporate really buying? Just having the structure is not enough. It should make economic sense else it is going to hit everyone very hard and then all would know how the clubs sustain."

Modwel threw out some ideas that he felt could benefit clubs as a whole. He said further

 "If would be better if there are so many people who want to run clubs, people actually come together and make less clubs"

On the upcoming season of Pune City, Modwel talked about the preparations of the team and why they avoided foreign pre-season tours this time around,

"There are three reasons why teams travelled abroad for pre-season tours. First being no infrastructure to train, second was the weather because around August it would be monsoon season and third was to get competitive teams. It is not a norm that we necessarily go abroad. We looked into many things like we have built our own hotel and flood-lit training pitch so we are sorted. The weather is favourable as rains were no longer there. About competitive games, in October most of the leagues in the countries are underway. So the ones who will play against us are the reserves of the teams who are not getting the matches. If they have games on weekends, they won't play friendly games in mid-week."

"Then we also saw last season's results. Second season, we never played a pre-season game, we won three of our first four games. Last season we won about nine pre-season games in a row and came back and didn’t start well. One is was sure that it didn't prove anything and there was no point in wasting money. It makes sense to stay here as your talking to your fans, to media and acclimatising"

Modwel was not too amused with the schedule for FC Pune City this season and expressed his concern saying,

"Again Pune would be playing four away games from the last five games and this has happened for the fourth year in a row. Unfortunately, the league tried to re-schedule but the stadiums are not there. So Pune's availability of stadium is actually our curse. It will again be a challenge again this year."

The CEO of Indian Super League franchise FC Pune City summarised his expectations from the team in the new season saying,

"The difference between teams is so less to be fair. Sometimes the schedules, injuries matter a lot. Last season Kerala lost to Mumbai 5-0 with four games to go and Kerala reached the finals not Mumbai. What I can promise on behalf of the team is we will not give up the fight. We are more "desrious" of getting into the playoffs than most other teams. We desperately want it and will work harder"

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