Indian football rarely makes it to the headlines of national media unless a cricketer is somehow involved in the proceedings. The trend was prominent this weekend again when Praful Patel, the president of the All India Football Federation, or AIFF, took a subtle dig at Indian cricketer Virat Kohli on Twitter.

To understand what led to the conflict, one needs to first understand how the governance of futsal works. The indoor version of football, which is played with five players on each side, is looked after by two global bodies.

The Asociación Mundial de Futsal, or AMF, founded in 1971, was making the calls before world football's governing body Fifa, under hugely controversial former president Sepp Blatter, claimed stake to the game in 1985 to enlarge its influence. Till date, the two bodies are at loggerheads and organise separate futsal World Cups. The Fifa Futsal World Cup will be held in Colombia later this year, while the AMF World Cup took place in Belarus in 2015.

In India, the AIFF demands authority in the sport's affairs, working under the large umbrella of Fifa, while the Futsal Association of India, or FAI, is affiliated with the AMF. The AIFF, led by Patel, has not done anything noteworthy to raise the profile of the sport in the country so far, let alone organising a proper league. However, the FAI has come up with a brilliant idea of starting Premier Futsal, which is the first-ever multi-national Futsal league slated to be held across eight cities in India in July.

Star attraction

The league has already grabbed many eyeballs, with Portugal football legend Luis Figo joining as the president of the competition and Kohli being named as the brand ambassador. While the Indian Super League (ISL), the AIFF’s pet project, has only been able to lure famous footballers who have either retired or are at the twilight of their career, the Futsal league has pulled off a coup by signing Alessandro Rosa Vieira, popularly known as Falcao. The 39-year-old has been named by Fifa as the best futsal player in the world twice and is known as the Pele of futsal.

Quite expectedly, all this has not gone down well with the AIFF, who have sent a letter to the state associations ordering them to keep new league at bay. "The AIFF is the governing body for all forms of football, including Futsal, in India and we will be announcing our plans in relation to Futsal in due course," read the letter from Kushal Das, the AIFF secretary.

The latest person to face the heat has been Kohli, who also happens to be the co-owner of ISL franchise FC Goa. According to the contractual obligations of ISL, no stakeholder of the cash-rich football league can take part in other football related activities without taking permission from the governing body. Kohli has dared to do that, becoming the face of the fledgling league and is hence at the centre of the recent furore.

AIFF's incompetence

The series of incidents that have unfolded in the last two months have laid bare the incompetence of AIFF in running both football and futsal. Five-a-side football remains a very popular sport in the country, especially among the amateurs, given the ever increasing dearth of proper fields. However, the governing body has failed to use its perpetual hegemony in the development of the sport and has now been caught off-guard by a franchise league that has already got on board a broadcaster and a number of interested team owners.

Rather than acting quickly and conceding that they needed a push from a competitor group to finally chalk down any plans for the five-a-side game, the AIFF has hinted that the players who will be taking part in the new competition will be sanctioned.

This brings back memories of the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s treatment of the "rebel" Indian Cricket League, which eventually led to its banning and the commencement of the officially approved Indian Premier League. However, for a professional player, the threat in case of cricket seemed to be a more serious one as it would have closed the door of the national team forever. Even if the futsal players get banned by the AIFF, they can still take part in the AMF’s competitions.

The most appalling aspect about the whole saga is the AIFF’s keenness to stamp its authority over something it did not care about till not too long ago. Patel can refer to contractual obligations and can eventually boot Kohli out from the pool of ISL stakeholders, but that will only pinpoint his own failure to develop the game. The recent stream of events involving Premier Futsal lays bare the ineptness of the AIFF and hints at the possible reasons for the downward spiral of Indian football.

Atanu Mitra has been covering Indian football for more than four years. He tweets @Atanu00.