Last year, on the eve of the first Indian Super League (ISL) final, former England goalkeeper and Kerala Blasters head coach David James told a packed media room, “This is the biggest game in Indian football…and the world wants to know about it." More than 36,000 flocked to the DY Patil stadium in Mumbai for the final on 20 December, as Atlético de Kolkata beat the Blasters 1-0 in injury time. About 57 million viewers watched it on television. Cricket and Bollywood stars added more glamour. Indian football had never had it so good and shiny.

Come Monday, the hangover had cleared. So had the illusion. Indian football was back to being ignored. A week after the ISL finals, Indian football’s official season opener, the Indian Federation Cup, played to empty stadiums in one of its spiritual homes: Goa. I-League, the official national football league of the country, was a hectic, truncated affair, restricted to five months because the ISL had taken a big bite into the Indian football schedule.

At the end of the I-League, which was won by Mohun Bagan, one of the giants on the national scene, Dempo, were relegated. Newly formed team Bharat Football Club (FC) shut shop after just one season. The Indian national team dropped to its lowest Fifa world ranking of 173 in March. It suffered an embarrassing 1-2 loss to Guam, the smallest nation in Asian football and ranked 33 places below India (on 16 June, in a World Cup qualifying game).

The ISL proved that football can work as a spectator sport in India, so averse to watching anything other than cricket in a stadium. But it also seems to be glossing over the inherent structural shortcomings of Indian football. It’s like placing a sparkling roof on a building with shaky, corroded foundations.

“I understand that from the outside, it looks bad. People are going to judge the ISL, given its magnitude, in comparison with Indian football," says India captain Sunil Chhetri, who will turn up for the Mumbai City FC in the ISL, which begins on 3 October.

“But the fact is the Indian national team and the ISL are two completely different entities. What has happened with the national team is our responsibility. What the ISL has shown is that Indian football can be exciting and pull crowds. It’s a start."

The gaping hole in the Indian football landscape has always been the lack of any sort of concerted grass-roots programme. For a country the size of India, there is, unfortunately, no unified platform to scout and develop younger players.

“The way the ISL is structured, it’s a top-down approach," says Pradhyum Reddy, assistant coach of Bengaluru FC. “ISL teams don’t have a youth team, which is something most clubs all over the world have. But then other Indian clubs have also been in existence for a while and they haven’t done much to develop a stronger grass-roots programme either."

All India Football Federation (Aiff) vice-president Larsing Ming Sawyan believes that clubs are the “biggest engines of development" in big football nations and it is up to them rather than the national federation to provide a stronger talent base.

“Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, Aiff hasn’t been strict enough in making the clubs adopt and implement AFC (Asian Football Confederation) licensing criteria. It is only in the last couple of years that it has been applied in a more stringent manner; criteria like having a professional coach, a youth development coach, age-group teams," he says.

Aiff technical director Scott O’Donnell agrees a lot has to be done, but believes the ball has been set rolling with regard to youth development. “We cannot expect things that have been happening for the last 20 or 30 years to change overnight," says the Australian. “Having said that, we now have 11 state associations implementing a grass-roots programme in their state. We hope to increase that to 16 states in 2016."

For most Indian clubs, results have been a priority. They have found it more prudent to invest in bringing foreign talent, especially in striking positions, rather than focus on developing cheaper, homegrown Indian talent.

“This is an issue all over the world, but maybe even more so in Asia," says O’Donnell. “Teams want to win and to win you have to have someone who can score goals. So in most cases they will hire at least one, maybe two foreign strikers. And that obviously limits the opportunities for the local strikers."

Since the inception of the I-League in 2007-08, Chhetri has been the only Indian to feature on the season’s top-scorer list. He was the leading scorer in the 2013-14 season with 14 goals and shared the honour with Salgaocar’s Scottish striker Darryl Duffy and Shillong Lajong’s Cornell Glen, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago. In the National Football League, which ran from 1996-97 to 2006-07, Bhaichung Bhutia and R. Vijayan led the scoring charts for the first two seasons before foreigners monopolized the top spot.

It is unlikely to change, with the ISL keeping the spotlight firmly focused on foreign recruits. Indian strikers did not even feature in the top 10 in the ISL’s first season. Not only are the foreign players armed with more experience, their superior technical and tactical ability gives them an edge.

Brazilian star coach Zico, who heads the FC Goa ship, had observed last year that “playing too many foreigners in the ISL is not good as it will not help much in the development of Indian football. It will not give more exposure to Indian players to play alongside the foreigners."

Ever since the ISL was conceptualized, there has been talk about merging it with the I-League. While the ISL’s compact format has made it easier to get big marquee names on board, its span is too short to make a meaningful impact on Indian football. It has also thrown an already haphazard calendar into utter confusion. The I-League had to be delayed to January because the ISL ran till late December and the Federation Cup has been put on hold for a couple of years to reduce the strain on players. In between all this, the international matches have to be squeezed in, giving players little time to adapt and perform as a unit.

“I don’t know whether it will happen, but ultimately I think we will need to have one league that lasts for 11 months," says Chhetri, who will miss the first two ISL games since he will be on India duty.

“All the big countries have one league, where all the energies are focused. They have a separate schedule for internationals and make sure they don’t clash with club commitments. But that’s not the case here," he adds.

The ISL may be the showpiece event Indian football was missing. It might even be the greatest show in Indian football, but it can at most blind us to the harsh realities of the game here.

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