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Economic Times
03-08-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
Indian football's forever mess: ISL crisis risks shattering sport's big dreams
Agencies Indian football's forever mess: ISL crisis risks shattering sport's big dreams Statutory warning: If you love football, don't read this. It will hurt. The story so far: The All India Football Federation (AIFF) and the Football Sports Development Ltd (FSDL), a Reliance-owned company that runs the Indian Super League (ISL), are not seeing eye to eye. They remain poles apart in their renegotiation of the master rights agreement (MRA), which grants the marketing rights of India's toptier league to FSDL. FSDL favours a fundamental rewiring of the agreement, which involves the setting up of a new company—with itself, the clubs and AIFF as shareholders—to run the league. AIFF wants to continue with the current setup where it receives an annual fee of Rs 50 crore from FSDL, with a 5% hike baked in. Negotiations, which began in February, have stalled. What complicates matters is a separate case being heard by the Supreme Court on a new constitution to govern AIFF. For now, the court has directed AIFF not to sign any deal, including a renegotiated MRA. A verdict was expected on July 18, but it has been delayed with the court waiting to see if the National Sports Governance Bill, 2025, would be adopted in this session of Parliament. If it does, then the law, which will form the basis of regulating India's wild west of sports bodies, will be the foundation of a newly constituted AIFF as well. The problem? ISL usually runs from September to April, and with time ticking, Indian football is now a game of inglorious uncertainties. Questions abound. When will the bill pass? When will the SC deliver its verdict? Will a newly constituted AIFF have enough time to negotiate with FSDL on a new MRA? Will they be able to reach an agreement? With most clubs going slow on preparations, citing uncertainty, will players be fit? Will the league start on time? Will all the delays end up with the league being nixed for this season? If the league gets cancelled this year, expect sanctions from the governing body of world football, Fifa, apart from a damaged brand, disappointed fans and an admission that perhaps the strongest attempt yet to breathe life into Indian football has failed. Back in 2014, during the first ISL, there was a glimmer of hope that this was going to be the big break that India, then the world's second most populous nation, would need to spark interest in the world's most popular sport. For one, it was backed by Reliance, one of India's biggest names in business. With the organisational heft of IMG, the global sports marketing agency that had played a key role in setting up the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament, it was taken for granted that things would be was also a sprinkling of global stars in the first edition—Alessandro Del Piero, Freddie Ljungberg, Robert Pires, David Trezeguet, Joan Capdevila, Luis Garcia and Nicolas Anelka—to attract was interest from corporates as well as movie and sports stars to own the franchises, as they saw it as an opportunity to get early on what could be the next a while, it worked. It was reported that 429 million viewers watched the inaugural edition live on TV, making it the second most watched sport in India after ISL couldn't sustain the momentum. Last year's viewership numbers reportedly dwindled to 130 million which, while outnumbering all other sports save cricket, is not quite the sparkle that was expected from ISL after a decade.A key reason, say club owners, is the quality of football itself. As top global names nearing retirement were phased out, their replacements, as well as Indian players, didn't quite step up as expected. There could be another reason, too. ISL started as a twomonth tournament and then changed to a longer league format. Joy Bhattacharjya, CEO of Prime Volleyball League, believes that Indian audiences prefer a short, twomonth, IPL-esque format to a sevenor eightmonth-long league format followed by ISL. While the current format is in sync with the global norms in football, it may have diluted a sustained audience engagement in India where folks aren't used to longer leagues. Net-net, after 10 years, no one is really making money from their investments.A club CEO told ET on condition of anonymity that each ISL club is losing Rs 30-35 crore annually for the last 11 years: 'Your average ISL club has easily lost about Rs 330-350 crore. I'm not even counting interest costs.'The league's cumulative losses have been variously pegged between Rs 3,000 crore and Rs 5,000 numbers weren't sustainable, and one club, FC Pune City, had to shut shop, while Delhi Dynamos moved to Bhubaneswar, lured by a free stadium and increased are worries for other clubs. As a club executive laments, 'We are in a situation where commercially, the sport is not viable. As the broadcasters cannot see value right now, the return on investment is weak.'What will it take to fix that? A key worry —and a quick fix that clubs suggest—pertain to player salaries. A wage-to-turnover ratio under 60% is considered the best practice globally for football clubs. For ISL, claims a club executive, this figure sometimes crosses 70%. The ISL has a mandatory wage cap of Rs 18 crore, but this is frequently flouted, a club owner says on condition of to the salary conundrum is the lack of quality players coming in. To get even marginally decent players, clubs end up paying a lot, claims a club executive. Player salaries have gone from ' ?20 lakh back in 2010 in the I-League (the former top tier) to Rs 3 crore now. The quality of players and the quality of football have not improved in proportion,' says another club Prabhakaran, executive committee member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and former secretary general of AIFF, counters it is market forces at play: 'The pool of talented players is small. At the same time clubs want to win the league by giving the best salaries to the best available players. The clubs are hiking the salaries, nobody has asked them to pay more.'Some clubs want the league to renew its commitment to a wage cap, with far stricter enforcement and oversight on payments made to footballers on the sly as to really fix Indian football, short-term remedies are not enough. To make ISL a more attractive experience for the fan and a more attractive proposition for the advertiser, the quality of football should go up.'You need a steady flow of young talented footballers to make a league sustainable, and that hasn't happened because not enough money is being invested in football structure and youth football,' complains a club executive Bhattacharjya, who was project director of the Fifa Under-17 World Cup in India in 2017, reckons that the administrative set-up for football in India is broken beyond club owners and chief executives ET spoke to squarely blame AIFF which, they allege, is not investing enough in grassroots football, resulting in a pyramid, where money concentrates on the top, with little trickling down. Their question: what has the AIFF been doing with the Rs 50 crore going into its coffers as fees for organising the league?In FY2023, AIFF's income touched Rs 137 crore, which came down to Rs 110 crore in FY2024. Even so, AIFF remains the second richest sports body in Chaubey, president, AIFF, responds: 'Marketing partner FSDL provides fees to AIFF. These funds are utilised by AIFF across various areas, including grassroots and youth development, coach and referee education, development of national teams, and the organisation of national championships across all age groups both for men and women.' He says that last year, 'AIFF successfully conducted 21 championships, featuring a total of 1,697 matches'.Prabhakaran says, 'The budget is 10% of what a country the size of India requires. With the current numbers, you cannot invest in high-quality manpower. You cannot invest in grassroots football, in youth, in infrastructure.'It is a classic chicken-or-egg situation— to improve the financial situation you need to improve viewership, for which you need better football, for which you need better players, for which you need to invest in youth, for which you need said, ISL has been the most successful attempt to put together a national-level football competition—at least from a viewership attempts like the National Football League (NFL) and the I-League had failed to improve Indian football. A league should power the performance of the national team. But strangely enough, India's best-ever Fifa ranking of 94 was in 1996, before NFL. The best since—No. 96— was in 2017. Currently the team is at a dismal 133. This is not how things were supposed to now, everyone is waiting, hoping against hope that things will work out with the passing of the sports law—the prospect of a reconstituted AIFF and a new MRA. If it doesn't, then what will be under threat immediately include the livelihood of hundreds of players, support staff and their families, and indeed the likelihood of a revival of Indian football anytime thing this correspondent, as a football fan, can guarantee is that supporters of Indian football—ignored by all—are angry.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
📽️ The 5️⃣ best goals from Real Madrid v Juventus 💥
📽️ The 5️⃣ best goals from Real Madrid v Juventus 💥 The collection of bangers is insane. This Tuesday, Juventus and Real Madrid face off in the Club World Cup round of 16 for one of the most unpredictable duels. Over the years, the Madrid and Turin teams have clashed multiple times in high-stakes matches, and this fixture has never been short of spectacular goals. OneFootball invites you to discover five of the most memorable ones. Roberto Carlos (2003) The Brazilian full-back in his purest style. Alessandro Del Piero (2008) The author of a magnificent double thanks to this free-kick, il Pinturicchio even received an ovation from the Santiago Bernabeu upon his exit. Alessandro Del Piero (2008) The real terror of Real Madrid before Messi, it was him. Cristiano Ronaldo (2018) Perhaps one of the most memorable goals in the history of the Champions League. Mario Mandzukic (2017) Scoring a goal like that in a Champions League final is the dream of any football fan. Which one is your favorite? Also read: - Olivier Giroud is expected this Tuesday in Lille! Advertisement - How can Chelsea continue to buy players? - Surprise transfer at PSG, a Liga talent demanded by Luis Enrique This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇫🇷 here. 📸 PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU - 2008 AFP
New York Times
16-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Club World Cup Briefing: What's drawing fans? Can Auckland mismatches be avoided? Is heat a problem?
The opening two days and five games of the Club World Cup have witnessed a 10-goal thumping, a dominant performance from Europe's champions, struggles for the best from the U.S., passionate fans on the streets and reasonable attendances in the stadiums. What the tournament becomes over the next few weeks (and years) remains to be seen but despite justified criticisms and concerns in the build-up, it has not lacked for talking points so far. Here The Athletic's James Horncastle explains what (or who) is drawing in the crowds, whether mismatches like Bayern Munich's demolition of Auckland City can be avoided and whether playing games in the midday heat is a problem for this summer and next. The magnetism of Lionel Messi continues to draw people in. As your correspondent entered the Hard Rock stadium for the opening game of the Club World Cup, he passed a line of fans all dressed in pink, all with the same name and number on the back of their jerseys. It made you feel bad for Messi's teammates, even the illustrious ones like Luis Suarez and Sergio Busquets and raised the question: how many of the 60,927 supporters were in Miami gardens to see Messi first and Inter Miami second? That it was the opening night of a new competition didn't seem to matter to those in attendance. It was a chance to catch Messi on a Saturday night. Everything else, from the opening ceremony to French Montana's appearance and the cross-bar challenge won by Alessandro Del Piero at half-time served as warm-up act for Messi's 90 minutes on stage. Advertisement Think of it like a residency in Las Vegas. Ordinary punters considered it as such. They were more interested in that than the legitimacy of the competition and the ego of its inventor, FIFA president Gianni Infantino. Even the Al Ahly fans, who were in greater numbers than the Inter Miami ones, were more curious about how their team would cope against the greatest player of all-time. The issue for FIFA is that, without man of the match Oscar Ustari in goal, Inter Miami could have been 3-0 down at half-time against Al Ahly. Getting out of the group is going to be tough for Javier Mascherano's Flamingos and if they are eliminated at the first hurdle, the Club World Cup will not be able to count on Messi and his ability to boost interest and attention. Auckland City billed themselves as the 'working class team of the Club World Cup'. Bayern Munich, by comparison, are an example of the 1 per cent and the equality gap was brutally exposed in Cincinnati. That the German champions won handsomely came as no surprise. One of the pundits in DAZN's studio, Luis Garcia, predicted a 5-0 win. But it was 6-0 at half-time and the lack of competitiveness showed the problem in widening this competition to 32 teams. Auckland City, for what it's worth, earned their spot here. They have won the OFC Champions League 13 times since 2006 and were regulars in the old format of the Club World Cup. This scoreline, however, gave oxygen to those who wanted to see extreme dis-proof of concept. And yet the irony is that even if humble Auckland City lose all their games at the Club World Cup, the money they will earn from their participation could distort the competitive balance back home in New Zealand, It would, domestically, make them the 1 per cent, although there has been some wrangling with the New Zealand FA over how that cash should be divided. Advertisement A quirk is that neighbouring Auckland FC, owned by Bournemouth owner Billy Foley, play not in New Zealand but in the A-League in Australia where they are currently top. This means they fall under the Asian Football Confederation rather than the Oceanic equivalent and compete against teams from Saudi and Japan for a chance to make the Club World Cup. Having a team from the OFC is an essential part of Infantino's vision for a truly global competition. He believes it will inspire 'so many people back in their countries.' But one imagines scorelines like Sunday's 10-0 will continue to be a feature of it as long as clubs from Fiji, New Caledonia and Tahiti qualify for future editions. At the World Cup in 1994 players complained about the kick-offs in the afternoon sun. Soaring temperatures made it impossible to play at high intensity and the spectacle suffered as fatigue built over the course of the tournament with the final, a 0-0 between Brazil and Italy in Pasadena, becoming the first to ever come down to a shootout. The Club World Cup is only a weekend old and players and coaches are already talking about the challenge of playing in the heat. Auckland City's 10-0 defeat to Bayern couldn't be blamed on it, but, as simple as it looked for the German champions, Michael Olise told DAZN: 'The conditions weren't easy.' PSG's Vitinha said the same after the Champions League winners racked up another dominant win against Atletico Madrid at the Rose Bowl. His manager Luis Enrique was surprised by his team's performance given it was 85 degrees and warmer still pitchside. He explained: 'It is the best scheduled time for (TV in) the European countries but it is difficult to play in these conditions.' Perhaps there should be more clamor for the US to hold a winter World Cup… Chelsea v LAFC — group D, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, 3pm ET, 8pm BST Boca Juniors v Benfica — group C, Hard Rock Stadium, Miami, 6pm ET, 11pm BST Flamengo v ES Tunis — group D, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, 9pm ET, 2am BST You can sign up to DAZN to watch every FIFA Club World Cup game for free (Top image: Getty Images)
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Why Retegui's 25th Atalanta goal was legendary
Mateo Retegui has made history as the all-time Atalanta top scorer in a single Serie A season, but also broke Alessandro Del Piero's particular record. The striker was on target to secure the 3-2 victory away to his old club Genoa this evening at Marassi and that allowed him to consolidate his status as Capocannoniere. Advertisement It was his 25th goal of the campaign in Serie A, breaking the club record of 24 that had been set by Pippo Inzaghi in the 1996-97 campaign. Retegui breaks Inzaghi and Del Piero records TURIN, ITALY – JANUARY 04: Filippo Inzaghi, Head Coach of US Salernitana, looks on prior to the Coppa Italia Round of 16 match between Juventus FC and US Salernitana at Allianz Stadium on January 04, 2024 in Turin, Italy. (Photo by) This is not all, because Retegui also broke another rather unusual record that confirmed his versatility as a centre-forward. Since Opta began collating the results in 2005-06, Alessandro Del Piero at Juventus in 2007-08 was the only player to have scored at least 10 goals with his left foot and 10 with his right in a single Serie A season. Alessandro Del Piero looks on during a press conference at Centro Tecnico Federale di Coverciano on June 03, 2024 in Florence, Italy. (Photo by) Retegui's tally this term is 10 left-footed goals, five with his head, and today he got the 10th with his right foot.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
How bad was Spurs v United in comparison to other European club finals?
Juventus 0-0 Milan (2-3 pens) 2003 Champions League final The attacking talents on show for both Italian sides were frightening. Juventus partnered David Trezeguet in attack with Alessandro Del Piero, while Milan opted for Pippo Inzaghi and Andriy Shevchenko in front of the creativity of Andrea Pirlo, Clarence Seedorf and Rui Costa. Such was the embarrassment of riches available to manager Carlo Ancelotti, Rivaldo was an unused sub. Yet after 120 minutes, the final remained goalless. Marcello Lippi, who had succeeded Ancelotti as Juve manager in 2001, was particularly culpable, having brought on the defensively minded Antonio Conte as a makeshift No 10 at half-time. How they missed the suspended Pavel Nedved. Milan prevailed in the shootout, with Paolo Maldini lifting the trophy at Old Trafford, but the final did nothing to dispel the belief that Italian football is a defensive game. Advertisement Related: Tottenham clinch Europa League glory on golden night to floor Manchester United Porto 1-0 Braga 2011 Europa League final A goal of exquisite beauty punctuated an otherwise drab affair as Radamel Falcao earned victory for André Villas Boas's side, a triumph that would contribute to the Portuguese manager moving to Chelsea later that summer. Falcao's looping header from a brilliant Fredy Guarín cross was the only highlight, with Braga looking only to frustrate their neighbours before conceding and unable to muster any sort of response once they fell behind. Even Villas Boas conceded afterwards his disappointment that the final had 'not been the spectacle' he had envisaged, while the Guardian's Paul Doyle, on liveblogging duties that night, was a little more forthright in his summary of the match: 'Well that was torpid. Nice enough goal to win it, though.' Tottenham 1-0 Man Utd 2025 Europa League final It is often the way that finals contested by teams from the same nation can be tight, cagey affairs – just look at this list – which is normally due to the finalists knowing each other well and often being concerned about losing to a long-established rival. In this case, it was much more to do with the fact that Spurs and Manchester United were lurching from dreadful domestic seasons, in which both sides lurked just above the Premier League relegation zone. The carrot of Champions League qualification and the stick of derision or potentially someone losing their job probably didn't help in opening up the contest, which was fittingly decided by a dismal Brennan Johnson deflection. Spurs fans won't care about that, or Ange Postecoglou's gameplan, which the Australian admitted afterwards was about 'minimising moments by having a strong foundation' – manager-speak for putting 10 men behind the ball for almost the entire second half. Nottingham Forest 1-0 Malmö 1979 European Cup final The fairytale of Nottingham Forest winning their first European Cup under Brian Clough often seems to omit how the final against the Swedish club was a drab affair. In an age where back passes to the keeper were common, especially in tight and important matches decided by the odd goal, it was a game heavy on offsides and stoppages. Forest had thrilled many en route to the final, including in a 4-1 win over Grasshoppers in the first leg of their quarter-final, and a 3-3 draw with Cologne in the first leg of their semi-final, but a tall, physical Malmö nullified Forest in the final, before Trevor Francis's headed winner, in his first European appearance for the club, mercifully prevented the final from going into extra time. As ever, though, it was Clough who had the last word: 'It wasn't a great game but they were a boring team, Malmö. In fact the Swedes are quite a boring nation. But we still won, so who cares?' Bayern 1-1 Valencia (5-4 pens) 2001 Champions League final 'Two teams with their minds more obviously on correcting the perceived injustices of the past than on winning a match through the sort of expressive football that earned the European Cup its reputation fought each other virtually to a standstill in Milan,' began Richard Williams' match report from San Siro. This was both a disappointing match – a penalty each for Bayern and Valencia sending the game towards, you guessed it, more penalties in a shootout – but also two disappointing performances, particularly for that Valencia side. The La Liga team were appearing in their second successive final, having been thrashed by Real Madrid in the 2000 showpiece a year earlier. Owen Hargreaves did such a good job of negating Pablo Aimar that the Valencia manager, Héctor Cúper, withdrew the Argentinian playmaker at half-time. Ultimately, the Spanish side could not conquer man-of-the-match Oliver Kahn. The goalkeeper saved Mauricio Pellegrino's spotkick in the shootout to give Bayern their fourth European crown.
