The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has cleared the way for I-League clubs to register six foreigners, five of whom can be fielded in a match. Two of the six registered foreigners must be from a member nation of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), while one AFC player can start among the five in the match, according to a media release sent out by AIFF on Tuesday.
This development follows a contentious meeting in New Delhi in June where five of the nine I-League clubs -- Aizawl FC, Minerva Punjab, Chennai City, Shillong Lajong and NEROCA -- had expressed their displeasure over a recommendation seeking the AIFF's permission to field eight foreigners, out of which two were to be from AFC member nations. While Kolkata clubs Mohun Bagan and East Bengal were reportedly in favour of this number -- DSK Shivajians and Churchill Brothers were believed to be undecided -- they had also sought to increase the number of foreigners from the existing four to five in the playing eleven, which now stands granted. AFC competitions such as the Champions League and the AFC Cup, however, need teams to play a maximum of four foreigners, one of whom needs to be from an AFC nation.
Robert Royte, owner of I-League champions Aizawl FC, a team that will be participating in the AFC Champions League playoffs of 2018, had said in June that he was "deadly against" the increase in foreign players for this season. "Aizawl have already made their position clear that the status quo of three [foreigners] plus one [AFC member player] should continue as per AFC regulation," he told ESPN on Tuesday. Asked if his club would continue to play the forthcoming season with the existing quota of four foreigners, Royte said that decision would be left to the technical staff of the team.
Minerva Punjab owner Ranjit Bajaj criticised the AIFF's decision, saying it appeared to be a compromise to the stated stands of the two groups of clubs at the June meeting. "It looks like they have just said we will neither allow four nor allow eight, so let's just settle for six foreigners," Bajaj told ESPN. "It means 10 teams will now have to field 20 extra foreigners, and these are slots where young Indian players could have been playing and getting a chance to impress the national coach. This is bad news for boys like Krishna [Pandit], Anirudh [Thapa] and Germanpreet [Singh], who could play for the India Under-23 team only because they got regular game time in the I-League." Thapa and Germanpreet are among the senior India probables who played the AFC Under-23 qualifiers in Qatar recently and have been called up by national coach Stephen Constantine ahead of the AFC Asian Cup qualifier in Macau in September.
Bajaj ruled out pulling out of the I-League, which is yet to finalise the final roster of teams following Bengaluru FC's decision to join the ISL, but indicated he might continue to play with four foreigners. "I don't want to field a foreign player for the sake of fielding one," he said. "The ISL has also reduced the number of playing foreigners from six to five, and here I-League is increasing that number. If a small club has to survive, they will have to increase their budget by a minimum of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh. It seems to be a mixed signal that the I-League is sending out to smaller clubs -- there is no compulsion to play more foreigners, but ultimately they might have to fall in line in order to compete and not get relegated."
Mohun Bagan finance secretary Debasish Dutta said, "The Indian Super League (ISL) has been doing it for so long [from this season the ISL will reduce the number of registered foreigners from 10 to eight] and nobody was bothered back then? They could register 10 foreigners. Did anybody not think that this would be detrimental for Indian football? People are asking us questions only when six players are getting a chance, but if all these years we were doing a bad job of supporting Indian football, why was that not pointed out to us?"
Dutta agreed that it would be difficult for teams to build a squad for the I-League with more foreigners than what would be allowed at AFC competitions, but pointed out it would be the same, or even worse, for ISL clubs. "This is a very bad system for Indian football, but at least now people will start pointing out the same," he said. "It is also true of the ISL, who are planning to play in the AFC Cup. I'm accepting that this is bad, but that is precisely why we wanted it to happen. Let there be criticism, and then we are hopeful that one day the rule will be uniform across all leagues."
East Bengal appeared to have a different take on the regulation. "The ISL has taken away the best of the Indian players," East Bengal's assistant general secretary Santi Ranjan Dasgupta told ESPN. "Now if we [I-League clubs] have to compete, both in football quality and marketability, then we felt we should have the ability to buy the quality and quantity of foreigners our budget allows. The ISL also allows eight foreigners, plus they took away all our best players and put them into the draft. We felt we needed the option of drafting better foreign players."