It was nice of Blatter to boost the morale of our young and budding players this way, but then a few years back when he visited Kolkata and watched a match between East bengal ( captained by Baichung ) and Mohan Bagan captained by ( goan Alvito de Cunha ) he wasn't too optimistic .
All that he promised and delivered were increased grants with no provisions or plans chalked out to improve football standards or have effective talent scouting and training programs . Even for the Asian Cup , the Indian Team was made to train in as many as 7 friendlies outside the country against 2nd rate club sides in Portugal etc. A friendly against a relatively strong team in NKorea was cancelled .
The attempts to draw foreign coaches to our shores , shore up our infrastructure in the form of Stadia , fitness strength and tactical training is non existant .....our domestic leagues haphazardly organized in the form of the I - league , Santosh trophy etc ( one of the major problems Identified by Bob Houghton ) is still to be restructured by the AIFF . Their marketing policies of the sport in the traditional strong holds of Football in our country i.e West Bengal , North East , Punjab , Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir , where the popularity and viewership of the sport peaks is utterly in doldrums .
Bureaucracy has long proved to be a veritable bane of sports , with the AIFF officials disregarding the immense experience of Bob Houghton and arguing when he emphasizes on physique ( height and strength rather than skill. Indians are most suited for European styles of play - our ball control skills are simply not at par with Latin American teams . While most players and playing staff understand this , the administrators resenting the expense incurred at extensive talent search programs refuse to co-operate.
We need new strategies to deal with the development of quality football , The marketing responsibilities should be entirely transfered to private organizations and make them responsible for funding talent scout programs while the Sports ministry should invest greatly in stadia , academies and training infrastructure and attempt to bring international quality teams to compete against us in India. A pool of 200-300 talented players should be handed lucrative permanent contracts and groomed extensively for exclusive national duty.
