NEW DELHI: It is down to the wire yet again to determine the champions of the 2021-2022 Hero I-League season, which will be decided on Saturday.
With 2022-23 being the first where I-League champions would be promoted to the Hero Indian Super League (ISL), as per the pathway decided in 2019, clubs have reportedly written to the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as, “(almost) three years have gone by and we haven’t heard from anyone”, Gokulam Kerala FC president VC Praveen told Hindustan Times.
AIFF general secretary Kushal Das told HT the federation’s position hasn’t changed. “The road map is there and in 2023, the winners of the I-League will get promoted to ISL without paying franchise fee,” Das told the daily. “Similarly in 2023-24. And after that promotion and relegation will start (in ISL). This is an agreed structure where all the clubs were present in AFC (in October 2019) and there is absolutely no change as far as AIFF is concerned.”
A draft of the next season’s calendar should be ready this month, said Das. The calendar will include all youth competitions, paused since 2019 due to Covid-19, beginning with the national under-17 junior women’s championship in Assam next month. From that competition some girls might be asked to join the national team readying for the under-17 World Cup in India later this year, he said.
Bookended by cup competitions, the men’s 2022-23 season will be around eight months, HT reports. It will start with the 20-team Durand Cup in September which “will be mandatory for all ISL clubs to play.” Last year, ATK Mohun Bagan and SC East Bengal were among the notable ISL teams that had skipped the competition, the world’s third oldest. The season will end with a 20-club Super Cup, again featuring all ISL teams. Both the Durand Cup and Super Cup will also have I-League teams, said Das. The Super Cup hasn’t been held since 2019.
HT further reports that also to be implemented from 2022-23 is a rule mandating states to hold leagues that last a minimum of two months and around 40-45 games. Barring Goa, Punjab, Mizoram and Assam, none of the AIFF’s 31 affiliated units could do that in the women’s game last season. The corresponding number for the men’s league is 16. Das accepted getting state associations to have longer seasons is difficult because funds are a problem, but said: “AIFF has told states that if they come up with a good project, we will look at them separately.”
