India is often described as a sleeping giant in the football fraternity, with nation's football team infamous for its mediocrity and underachievement, India's relation with the game is unknown with it's audience though.
With a plethora of a population at 1.4 billion, the equivalent of 3900 Iceland's or 390 Uruguay, India remains the largest population in the world to have never appeared in the FIFA world cup, this seams an improbable outcome. India’s football anecdote precedes pre independence when football clubs and tournaments instituted by the British regimes became some of the first in the world, Calcutta fc became the first football club to be established in 1872, while Mohan Began FC the oldest prevailing club in the Asian peninsula was formed in 1889, the IFA shield, one of the sport’s oldest knockout competition was inaugurated in 1893. In 1911 Mohan Began became the first all Indian team to emerge victorious in the IFA shield defeating east Yorkshire regiment in final in what was a landmark in Indian sport.
In 1937 the All India Football Federation (AIFF) was formed to administer football proceedings in the nation, it was affiliated with FIFA in 1947, the year India became Independent. The Indian team qualified by default for the 1950 FIFA world cup held in Brazil owing to withdrawals by other significant Asian teams. But the legend has it that the Indian team was forbidden participation as at the situation the world cup was not considered as the prestigious and glamourous in comparison to other global tournaments such as the Olympics.
The period from 1951-1962 is commonly referred as to India’s Golden years in football as the nation competed for and won various titles, two Asian games gold medals in 1951 and 1962, sandwiched a fourth place finish in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and victories in various other tournaments. In the 1960 Olympics held in Rome, the Indian team held France to a draw and gave a scare to the Hungarian team which was considered the best in the world, an equivalent to pinnacle in that era.
Indian football has underperformed since failing to keep in sync with tactical and physical progress made by the rest of the world, the rise of cricket as India’s primary sport, loss of mass interest in football and decades of persistent negligence resulted in India’s global standing plummet to its nadir in the years to follow.
The national football league India’s first semi-professional national league was established as late as 1996 with football until the largely played within state leagues and among government institutions. The NFL failed to have the desired impact and was significantly affected by infrastructural issues and apathetic federation and unprofessionalism within clubs. A decade of further stagnation resulted in the introduction of a rebranded national league, named I-league in 2007, a second division was established with the protocol of promotion and relegation.
However despite finding a broadcast partner in ZEE sports and a league sponsors in ONGC, the league was unable to capture the national imagination with merely certain pockets of the nation maintaining stadium attendances and viewership, Mohan Began and East Bengal famous Calcutta derbies regularly drew crowds in access of 60 thousands, but the other clubs found the going much tougher. The issues related to dreadful infrastructure and unprofessional clubs pertained, with players not getting paid, clubs suffering losses and some even shutting down all together. In October 2010 the AIFF announced a premature termination of its ten year broadcast deal with the zee network
In December 2010 the AIFF signed a landmark 100 million pounds deal with IMG reliance giving them exclusive commercial rights to sponsorships, advertising, broadcasting, merchandizing, video francizing and most significantly the right to create a new football league for a period of 15 years. IMG and Reliance industries had previously entered a joint venture agreement to develop and own sports and media properties in India
IMGR had a clear plan to build a new national league of professional city based franchises replicating the Indian premier league in cricket, the primary stakes holders in league would be football sports development limited held by Neeta Ambani and star network who would also be the broadcast partners. A close league system based chastely on expansion meant that there was to be no promotion or relegation system for a period of 10 years from the inception of the league. A home and away league was to be followed by a two legged semi-finals playoff between the top four teams, followed by a final at neutral venue.
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