Everybody Wants One League

6. Everybody Wants One League

When the committee members went around interviewing people about Indian football, they discovered that almost everyone was favour of solving this mess of having I-League and ISL running separately,

"We were impressed by the level of commonly held views amongst those we met.  There was near-unanimity on the central issue of there having to be one national league system, with promotion and relegation links, as opposed to the concurrent leagues which exist today.

There are differences of opinion as to how and by when this should be implemented, at a detailed level, as would be expected. There are contractual issues that have to be addressed, to establish a commercial and financial framework for the Road Map, as well as governance changes that will need to be made. We set out below our views on the single national league structure to be adopted, and detailed matters which we expect to be resolved as the implementation phase progresses.  Importantly, we were impressed by the high level of agreement that every stakeholder is going to have to give something.  All key stakeholders acknowledge that there will have to be compromise, and see this Road Map as a long-term settlement for the benefit of Indian football."

This underlines the fact that the current dual league system is hurting players, clubs and investors alike and highlights the need for a concerted effort needed from the top stakeholders in the sport to fix this first if they want Indian football to progress towards a path of real, uniform development.

One can say that this piece of information became one of the core motivations for the committee members to put such vigorous emphasis on unifying the league structure and implementing promotion-relegation as soon as possible.

Along with fixing the Indian league system, the report also suggests ways to help Indian players get a bigger role in the clubs. Here's how...