CHENNAI: A year after the

(

) was forced to shift the tri-nations tournament from the city and vowed not to bring football events to the city again in the near future, it seems that the federation has again opened up to the idea of conducting one of India's warm-up games in the lead-up to the Asian Cup, which will be held in the UAE from January 5 next year.

The AIFF is planning to host friendlies against either Syria or Saudi Arabia, who played in the World Cup recently, around October and November and it was learnt that if the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT) and the state government show interest, Chennai might witness the national football team in action after a decade.

However, it all depends on whether SDAT will co-operate with the AIFF this time around. Last year, SDAT's "ridiculous demands" of Rs 2 lakh per game and Rs 75000 for each practice session were "unacceptable" for AIFF. In fact, the federation had to shift the event in the last minute even after renovating the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. However, this time AIFF is planning to approach the SDAT member-secretary Reeta Harish Thakkar first and the state's sports minister Thiru P. Balakrishna Reddy before making any progress.

A source close to the developments said that AIFF wants to host the matches in Chennai because the weather in Chennai during November will be similar to that of Asian Cup venue UAE. "It will help players acclimatize easily when they reach UAE. But AIFF want to tread cautiously this time. The point is if the Chennai Football Association and Tamil Nadu Football Association could avail Nehru Stadium at a nominal price, why AIFF should pay such a high amount especially when the national team will be playing here? They want to have a working relationship with SDAT and is ready to bring football matches to the city if the SDAT offers them the facilities at a decent price," the source said.

TN part of AIFF's State Development Project: That Tamil Nadu features highly in AIFF's plan of action can be gauged from the fact that the state has been included as part of the federation's State Development Project. There are nine other states - Maharashtra, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Mizoram, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Goa, Punjab, Odisha - and New Delhi under the project.

"If you notice, there is no Karnataka in the list even though the state is home to one of the biggest clubs - Bengaluru FC - in the country and often hosts India's camps. A lot of factors like the success of both Chennaiyin FC and Chennai City in their own way, the women's team winning the league have worked in favour of Tamil Nadu. AIFF sees that there is a lot of potential here and they want to exploit it. They have already appointed a development officer for TN and he will be responsible for the initiation of the project in the areas of youth leagues and competition, women's football, grassroots, coach education, player registrations, refereeing and academy accreditation," said the source.