Indian coach Bobby Houghton says that the game is on the verge of some exciting changes. He further mentions that IPL’s success has caught the eye of FIFA and the AFC, who are eyeing a similar project in football in the near future.
Houghton speaks with passion whenever he talks about the changes that have to be made to improve the quality of the Indian national side. In the build-up to the defence of the Nehru Cup, the Englishman has taken his squad over to Barcelona where the team is in a training camp.
Despite the meticulous preparation for the tournament, Houghton found time to speak to Goal.com and explained how the game can be improved domestically.
“This year will be very interesting because a debate has been sparked, and the national team has had some success. There’s a new president after seventeen years, I think, in the Federation. There’s a new General Secretary after 12 years that’s going to be appointed in the next six weeks. And there’s going to be a Chief Executive Officer for the league. So the next six months will be very interesting for Indian football.”
While Houghton anticipates the changes, he remains sceptical about the national league.
“The domestic structure is so poor that when the boys aren’t in the national team and in the club structure, it’s not good for them…the domestic competition is dominated by foreigners really. I mean in my first year there were only ten teams in the I-League.
"So that’s 110 players and everyone has got three foreigners, so if you take them and the goalkeepers out of the equation, it means you only have seventy boys playing professional football in a country of 1.3 billion….”
And while Houghton acknowledges that since then the number of teams has increased, he remains concerned at the number of games players are put through during the season.
“There’s a myriad of competitions. Some of them have existed for more than a hundred years, so it’s very difficult to get them to move away from these competitions. They are all played at different times and different venues, and often clubs are playing five games in ten or twelve days.
“You know we’ve really got to get away from that and concentrate on a strong central professional league. This is a decision for Indian football in general and that means the state associations and the national association. You can continue that tradition if you like that but then you will never produce a successful national team, never.”
Houghton’s mantra is clear, create a strong national league which is highly competitive, central, and has an emphasis on Indian players, and in return he can deliver a team which can win more titles.
Winning the AFC Challenge Cup last year, meant India qualified for the Asian Cup in 2011. India’s Cricket Board meanwhile is reportedly set to help the All India Football Federation (AIFF) to prepare for those finals with a one-off payment of several crores.
And according to Houghton, the success of cricket’s Indian Premier League has also inspired world football’s governing body.
“If you look at the IPL it has generated such an enormous amount of revenue because of television coverage. FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) are eyeing the same possibilities in football.
"So there is big support and one of the reasons I’m here is that there is a FIFA initiative with the All Indian Football Federation. So it’s definitely a country that’s going to move forward. But in order to do that they have to grasp a more modern approach to the domestic game.”
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