AIFF sets the ball rolling for I-League-ISL merger

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 4

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) on Friday officially started the process to merge the I-League, the country’s premier domestic tournament, with the new franchise-based Indian Super League (ISL), giving itself a “couple of years” to compete the process.

In a marathon meeting in Mumbai, AIFF president Praful Patel made it clear to the I-League and the ISL management that the two leagues can’t sustain separately for long and the need of the hour was to have a single football league with “16-20 teams participating in it”.

It was for the first time that the top officials of the I-league and IMG-Reliance, the organisers of the ISL, sat together to discuss the way forward towards having a single league that will run for “8-9 months”. The AIFF is under considerable pressure from the FIFA, sport’s world governing body, and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to have a single league. FIFA has already made it clear to the AIFF that it could recognise only one domestic premier league.

It was decided to form a nine-member committee, comprising the officials of the AIFF, I-League clubs and the ISL to facilitate the merger. “One league has to go out, but the merger is going to be a tricky affair. The ISL management has sought time to discuss the matter with the ISL club owners. The ISL, in its current structure, is unlikely to make profits for a few years,” a senior official, who attended the meeting, told The Tribune.