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AIFF's Calcutta bias questioned

K Bhaskaran

Joaquim Alemao, the vice-president of the Goa Football Association, has made a serious charge against Asoke Ghosh, senior vice-president of the All India Football Federation.

While reacting to the AIFF disciplinary committee's decision to award three points and three goals to East Bengal from the abandoned match of the second Philips National Football league, Alemao made pointed reference to the latter stating, on All India Radio, this very same decision a fortnight before the disciplinary committee met.

Alemao said openly what others have been saying off the record -- which is, that the AIFF openly favours the big Calcutta clubs. It is a view that the football federation will find difficult to refute.

From the late forties to the seventies when Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting offered players from all over the country better terms -- including the promise of a possible berth in the national side -- few protested, mainly because the players of these three clubs were, by and large, the best in the country. At best, the inclusion of a player or two could have been questioned on ground of fitness, a case in point being left-winger Pradeep Bose, who did not play a single match in the Olympic qualifying competition in Rangoon in 1972 and whose place in the lineup had to be filled by a player who was normally a defender.

But such questionable selections to the national squad from the ranks of the Calcutta clubs were few and far between.

However, with the rise of teams from the Punjab, Goa and Kerala, the AIFF selection committee has perforce had to include more more players from these states in the national team. Again, with these states increasingly offering, to gifted players, terms comparable with or even better than those offered by the Calcutta trio, the trend in recent times has been for top quality players to opt for their own home states, and to play in familiar, comfortable surroundings.

In fact, in recent times, players have even preferred the more relaxed atmosphere of teams like Jagatjit Cotton and Textile Mills, Phagwara.

Yet, despite the gradual erosion of talent from the playing fields of Bengal, the domination of Calcutta in football matters, especially at the administrative level, persists. This dominance, in fact, has become even more noticeable in recent times.

Any follower of Indian football is aware that most of the power vests in the hands of AIFF president Priya Ranjan Das Munshi. It is he who takes almost all the decisions, and the AIFF secretary, Assam's Kedarnath Mour, has been rendered pretty much a rubber stamp in the process.

Take, for instance, the additions to the second edition of the Philips National Football League that is currently nearing its halfway stage. FC Kochin, India's first professional club, was denied entry to the Kalyani Black Label Federation cup earlier this season on the basis of a Dasmunshi letter to the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the contents of which have not been made public. Cleverly, it was given out that, like FC Kochin, Tiger Club of Rajasthan also were denied entry as they had not played in the local league.

Now, FC Kochin have been included in the National League on the basis of the club having won the Ernakulam District as well as the Kerala inter-district league (Kaumudi Trophy). It does not need clairvoyance or extraordinary intelligence to foresee a team with so many India players, as well as foreign players of a fair level by our standards, topping leagues which this season saw the slide of established sides like Kerala Police and Titanium, starting downwards on the graph.

So where is the big deal about including F C Kochin in the premier competition on the strength of winning league where they were far and away better than the competition?

This view is not to denigrate FC Kochin. There is no disputing their claim to a place among the elite sides. Their performance, in the eight months of their existence, speak loudly enough for their claims for inclusion in the National League. As do those of Mohun Bagan.

The question however is, what of the AIFF's earlier decision to have a competition to decide the two additional teams? Or was that decision another whim of the AIFF president, which was subsequently jettisoned because it was found inconvenient?

If this is the case of F C Kochin, then Mohun Bagan has been included after what could be construed as a tacit admission of their involvement in the Rovers Cup quarter-final league tie against Churchill Brothers being rigged to eliminate Air India. Mohun Bagan sacked coach Amal Dutta and punished team manager Sajal Bose after the match -- but subsequently, the AIFF includes Mohan Bagan in the country's premier tournament's lineup.

In its two seasons, the National League has highlighted the inadequacies of the AIFF administration in conducting an event that has attracted such heavy sponsorship. There was talk that the sponsors, Philips India, were not exactly glowing with satisfaction at the way the inaugural edition was run of the league was run, and it was even said that Philips may not continue as sponsors.

In the event, they have. But they do seem to have reservations, if the hike in sponsorship amount is taken into account. For 56 matches last season the sponsorship was Rs 7.5 million. For 90 matches this season -- an increase of almost 65 per cent -- the sponsorship was increased to Rs 3.3 million, an increase of only 44 per cent. That too, at a time when most events attract more by way of sponsorship in subsequent years.

One thing is clear, that it is not just television coverage that attracts sponsors -- they are equally keen to monitor the administration of the game they pump money into.

And as far as the AIFF is concerned, the lacunae are too obvious: there has been no proper framing of the framing the rules and regulations governing the competiton, whatever rules have been framed have not been circulated widely to not just the participating teams but also to the local organisers, match officials, and the media so there is no ambiguity in any one's mind, needless controversy surrounding the ball used has already devalued the competition, and so on, and forth.

Little wonder, then, that the Phillips light shines a bit less brightly on the National League than it did last year.

K Bhaskaran