Missing out building on Indian football's recent international success with sloppy hosting of the 34th Federation Cup

Sports is all about making the most of a winning momentum, for you never know when a bad run is around the corner. It is this winning spell that can do a lot to raise the profile of the sport, especially when the sport itself is showing signs of catching the imagination of the public after lying in deep slumber for years. 

Indian football can be seen in the same light - it had everything going for them recently – first, with the men’s team making it a hat-trick of Nehru Cup wins with a stupendous win over much-fancied Cameroon and second – the women’s team covering themselves in glory, annexing the 2nd SAFF Football Championship, staging a come-from-behind victory over Nepal and asserting their regional supremacy in no uncertain terms.

Clearly, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) must have been experiencing a ‘feel-good’ feeling given that they have so much to gloat about when it comes to our national team faring well in international competitions.

The country’s governing football body should have capitalized on the new-found self-belief and confidence in our national teams by promoting and staging the 34th Federation Cup – the country’s second biggest football tournament after the I-League – in the best possible manner.

The successful hosting of the 34th Federation Cup would have given further fillip to Indian football in terms of throwing up new talents. The onus (of hosting the Federation Cup) lies with AIFF and its commercial & broadcast partner IMG-Reliance. 

Of course, there might be hushed whispers that AIFF should not be squarely blamed for the fiasco,  since the commercial and broadcast rights are entrusted to IMG-Reliance, but no one can deny the fact that the football body has to take the blame along with IMG-Reliance.

The organizers' failure to provide live telecast of the event panned out to be a bitter pill to swallow as sports channel Ten Action backed out at the last minute. 

The 34th Federation Cup took a ‘lethal punch’ on its face with this broadcast fiasco and was nearly on the ‘canvas’ when the organizers shifted one of the two venues (other being Siliguri) from Ranchi to Jamshedpur  just a week before the start of the tournament. The Ranchi ground was deemed unfit to play and this is shocking when you consider that AIFF officials had inspected the ground a few weeks back and rendered it ‘playable’.

Thus, the non-telecast of the tournament coupled with the shifting of venue has indeed sullied the image of Indian football, which was riding a new wave of overflowing confidence, following the twin title wins by our men’s and women’s teams. 

Even AIFF's commercial partner IMG-Reliance failed to land a title sponsor for the 34th edition. Many would say securing a title sponsor for a sport like football in India is a tough ask, but lets not forget the 2005, 2006 and 2007 editions of the Federation Cup, which roped in title sponsors like Alchemist, Peerless and Hero Cycles. This just goes to show that getting sponsors is not something which is beyond the organizers. 

These two shoddy happenings were massive setbacks for the organizers; so what if it was largely their creation only. It’s a different matter whether the organizers at all see this developments as a ‘setback’ for them.

The Federation Cup clearly failed to live up to its billing. The late monsoon also did not help matters as teams engaged in slushy ground conditions for most part of the tournament with ‘quality’ football being the ‘casualty’.

For a tournament, which has a rich history dating back to 1977 when Mohun Bagan won the inaugural championship, edging out ITI-Bangalore by a solitary goal, the Federation Cup has been a victim of dwindling spectacular interest over the years.

Talking of the tournament’s early days, Kolkata clubs (Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting ) literally made Federation Cup their own fiefdom, winning the Federation Cup 22 times and finishing second-best 16 times. The Kolkata clubs’ stranglehold over the Federation Cup was broken in the last eighties when Goan club Salgaocar won the 1988 edition after settling for a bridesmaid finish a year earlier.

Salgaocar’s title win opened the floodgates for the non-Kolkata clubs to lay their hands on the winning trophy. The likes of Kerala Police and Phagwara-based JCT won the Federation Cup twice in the nineties and soon the Kolkata clubs' overwhelming dominance was halted. 

Sadly, both Kerala Police and JCT are a thing of the past – Kerala Police hardly takes part in big-ticket tournaments, while JCT had shut shop few years back along others like Mahindra United and FC Kochin.

Indeed, the Federation Cup has a rich legacy to flaunt but is reeling under unprofessionalism. One can’t help but feel that this was a great opportunity for the powers-that-be to promote Indian football and revive spectator interest given the recent the national teams' (men and women) impressive showing on the international stage. 

After all, for how long, are we going to watch matches on substandard grounds, in front of sparse crowds or near empty stands and viewers being bereft of live telecast? I dig deep and put my thinking cap on and ask again: Have the people who run football in the country missed out on a huge opportunity to cash in on the recent international success of our national teams (men and women)? I am fully convinced we indeed have….