The Indian Super League (ISL) launched among much fanfare in 2014 and bank-rolled by Reliance Industries, Rupert Murdoch’s Star India and sports management group IMG aimed to put Indian soccer in the big league. The proposal for the ‘League Partners’ in the ISL received an overwhelming response backing of big names, ranging from sports stars to movie stars and industrialists to cricket celebrities. The eight new franchises formed in April, 2014 represented the cities of Bangalore, Delhi, Goa, Kolkata, Mumbai, Guwahati, Pune, and Kochi. Chennai-based Sun Group had bagged the Bangalore team but opted out at the last minute and Bangalore was replaced by Chennai team, owned by a group Play on Skills. The owners of the club were upbeat about the constructive potential and scope of the league. Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, (owner of Kochi team) whose knowledge and understanding of sporting culture is second to none famously remarked that Indian Super League presents a great opportunity to develop a platform for the youngsters to learn and enhance their talent to develop into outstanding players.

Currently the ISL is into its second week, but sadly few Indians have hit the headlines as compared to the imported players. The franchisees are reluctant to field Indian players and are relying largely on their imports to deliver the good. The ISL playing condition state that every team’s starting line-up can have a maximum of six foreign players. A look at most of the matches played so far has revealed that the teams are fielding six foreign players, which restricts the number of Indians to 5 in the starting XI. Pune City FC even breached this rule in their encounter with Mumbai City FC and played with 7 non-Indian players ((Belardi, Cirillo, Katsouranis, Park, Rodriguez, Trezeguet, Dudu) for a good period of 30 minutes. If one argues that playing more foreign players increases chances of winning, then he/she should be reminded that Pune City FC lost the above match by a 5 goals margin.

If you ask anybody currently to name one current active Indian footballer, it is certain that 100% will reply Sunil Chettri. Sunil is also the captain of the Indian Soccer team Sunil Chettri is perhaps the most recognizable face in Indian football today.

He is inarguably the best current Indian footballer, holds the record for the all time goals scored for India, highest scorer of the I-League last season and has been part of I-League winning squads for two consecutive seasons now. Yet, the captain of the national football team is not a part of a league that claims to revolutionize Indian football.

The reason for his non inclusion is that his I league club, Bengaluru FC refused to release him. A question can here be put to all the franchisees – if they could shell out millions to buy foreign players, what stopped them from making high bids for the current Indian football captain. Even then, if Bangalore FC refused to release Sunil, what was the All India Football Federation (AIFF) doing to ensure that Sunil was able to take part in the inaugural league.

Football league has been made a new business venture in India. While the ISL is completely an Indian product and promoted by Indian companies, one looks largely foreigners playing in these leagues and grabbing the headlines. What is even more annoying to the average sports fan is that owners of the clubs are treating ISL like a page 3 event. Many passionate viewers have complained that television cameras are more focused on the team owners and their theatrical antics (understandable since mostly come from the Indian film industry) rather than the actual on field action. More often than not, rather than showing a replay of some significant event in the live match, the cameras divert their attention to the antics celebrity team owners, irking the viewer who sits through live coverage to watch actual football.

It is a paradox that while India is filled with talent and prospectively emerging players in football, our football league sponsors still feel the foreigners will bring them more sponsors and shall excite the viewers. However, they conveniently tend to forget that because of their love for foreigners, several good players seem to be dropped and never get a chance to show their talent, play and shine for our country. ISL was founded with the stated objective of making football a top sport in India and bringing international attention to Indian football so that home grown talent could mushroom. The very purpose upon which ISL was construed – which was to encourage the rise of emerging home grown football talent in India- seems to be defeated.

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