If you were looking forward to a spate of fireworks by Indian Super League (ISL) clubs during the summer transfer window, you would've felt disappointed. An unspectacular show served only to confirm that ISL clubs are now firmly guided by principles of realism and maturity.
Each ISL club is required to sign one 'marquee player' who, as per the league's definition, is a world-renowned footballer who has played for major clubs in major leagues and featured in major international tournaments.
In its inaugural season in 2014, the ISL had set tongues wagging wildly across the world by welcoming the who's who of world football, comprising global icons like Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires and Fredrik Ljungberg.
Since then, extravagance has firmly made way for pragmatism. The nature of marquee signings made for ISL-3 confirms this shift in approach, steps towards which were already evident in last year's wheeling and dealing.
Diego Forlan (Mumbai City FC), the 'Golden Ball' winner at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is the pick of the marquee signings for the third season. Along with Eidur Gudjohnsen (FC Pune City) and Aaron Hughes (Kerala Blasters FC), Forlan is one of only three new marquee faces for the upcoming season.
Hughes is the least eye-catching 'marquee' name in the short history of ISL (Didier Zokora comes a close second). But like Iceland's Gudjohnsen, though, Hughes was considered fit and capable enough to represent his country in Euro 2016 this summer, which makes him a potentially shrewd signing.
Lucio (FC Goa) and Helder Postiga (Atletico De Kolkata) have returned for another stint with their clubs. Meanwhile, Florent Malouda (Delhi Dynamos FC), John Arne Riise (Chennaiyin FC) and Zokora (NorthEast United FC) will stride out as marquee players in ISL-3. Last season, they were listed as 'foreign players'.
It's a marquee roster which doesn't make for an exciting read even if it may prove to be the most effective one till date. Marquee recruits for ISL-3 point towards a liking for players with prior experience in India. They also blur the lines between a foreign and a marquee player, prompting you to question the existence of the marquee rule.
Several factors have influenced the dynamics of marquee signings since the inception of the league. Latest among those were major revisions made to the marquee player regulations in January this year.
As per the new player guidelines, a marquee player in ISL-3 was required to have had a "professional playing contract with a club until at least December 2015" and must also have been "considered fit to play all matches". Clubs, to their credit, responded positively to these changes.
"I welcome the (active contract) rule," said Sukhwinder Singh, CEO of FC Goa, while speaking to ESPN. "Marquee players who are active will raise the quality of their own teams as well as that of their opponents." Pune City CEO Gaurav Modwell concurred. "It brings fitter players to the league," he said, "and deters clubs from circumventing the marquee rule by signing retired players."
Indeed, the practice of recruiting retired or unfit players has been detrimental to ISL's overall standard of football. Most ISL teams played better without their slow and sluggish superstars, who helped raise the ISL's global stature but made little impact on the pitch-providing insufficient return for the big bucks spent on them. Delhi Dynamos, for instance, shelled out ₹10.8 crores for Del Piero but the Italian legend did not feature in the club's best XI.
If these stipulations had been in place earlier, four marquee players would've been ineligible in each year of ISL and all clubs except Chennaiyin FC (who had Elano) would've been affected at some point over the two years.
Thus, on the whole, these amendments have made clubs alter their modus operandi, which for now appears to revolve around recruiting players who played in the previous season. Such players meet the eligibility criteria and are familiar with Indian conditions as well, making investing in them a safe and convenient option. This partially explains the high number (five) of marquee player repeats this season; the want of continuity accounts for the rest.
Average age of marquee players, though, at 36.6 years, was a touch older than the same figure for season two (which isn't surprising since five of the eight returning marquee players are a year older). What is worrying though is the revelation made by FIFA's Transfer Matching System (TMS) that the average age of foreign players bought by Indian clubs during the July-August transfer window was 29 years-the oldest in the world. If the aim is to have a fitter, younger and better league, restrictions put on marquee signings should only be the beginning.
New regulations, however, are bound to have an adverse long-term impact on the league's marquee-driven appeal. These guidelines have pushed ISL clubs further into the deep end of the transfer market, closer to the playground of richer leagues such as USA's Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Chinese Super League (CSL)-which lure players, even those who are in their prime, from their European counterparts by offering them astounding wages.
Since going after retired players is no longer an option, ISL clubs have little chance of competing for truly marquee players unless they choose to loosen their purse strings. January guidelines had made provisions for this by excluding marquee players from the squad's salary cap-thus inviting clubs to spend as much as they could afford.
According to an India-based player agent, however, this made little impact. "Two clubs quoted marquee player budgets as low as $250,000 (₹1.7 crores) and $300,000 (₹2 crores) while most others were unwilling to exceed $500,000 (₹3.3 crores)," he told ESPN. "Such figures cannot lure big-name active players to India."
To put things into perspective, John Stiven Mendoza, a key architect of Chennaiyin FC's ISL-2 triumph but not a marquee name by any stretch, earns $207,276 (₹1.8 crores) playing for New York City in the MLS.
Going toe-to-toe with richer leagues is only a distant possibility, warns Singh. "India is still evolving and we are a long way from the commercial scale of MLS or the Chinese Super League," says the FC Goa CEO. "I believe sufficient investments would be required to develop areas such as infrastructure, youth development and grassroots first before we can get into the high-value transactions."
Even though the ISL may not be in the same wealth bracket as the other young leagues, the likes of MLS and CSL have collectively driven wages higher-which, in turn, has led to increased wage demands.
A former Manchester United defender, who was a prominent figure during the Alex Ferguson era and also played in the English Premier League last season, wanted more than twice the offer made to him. Same was the case with a Liverpool midfielder who made a name for himself during the Rafael Benitez years.
A former Chelsea midfielder, who had been a Ballon d'Or nominee with the London club, did not find any bid to his liking, while a 2014 World Cup-winning German star had offers nearly five times more from rival leagues.
"ISL teams will remain wary of overspending in the future," Nikhil Sharma, CEO of Anglian Management Group, told ESPN. "In reality, the salary cap is irrelevant to most clubs, who will stick to their internal budgets."
Even in ISL-2, marquee names were not as glitzy as their predecessors. The likes of David Trezeguet, Luis Garcia and David James, who managed to send waves across the world, were replaced with players such as Adrian Mutu, Helder Postiga and Carlos Marchena, who barely caused a ripple.
Most clubs awoke to financial realities-losses reported to the tune of ₹30-35 crores-in addition to learning of the minimal on-field influence of such players. A new salary cap curtailed their ambitions too: squad wage limit of ₹21 crores had come into play prior to season two in order to prevent clubs from spending beyond their means.
Because of the ISL's want of a global standing, marquee names are far more crucial to the league from a marketing standpoint than to any of its clubs, which often look for ways to sidestep their marquee-related responsibilities. Clubs like Kerala Blasters and Mumbai City, for example, have had their marquee players double up as marquee managers in the past-a money-saving tactic that is now banned by the ISL.
"All clubs involved have progressed immensely on the technical front in the last two seasons," notes Sukhwinder Singh. "Hence, the focus would shift a lot towards the technical organization rather than individual brands."
Even as marketing gimmicks in the Indian context, marquee players aren't seen as valuable additions to the clubs. "The kind of marquee players we're getting, only hard-core football lovers would fully appreciate them," reckons Modwell. "With the (limited) knowledge of football in India, football flirts or casual fans may not know the incoming player anyway."
The ISL is still a young league in its learning phase and its quest to achieve the right balance will likely go on for quite a few years. In the league's third season, however, which begins on October 1st, Indian football fans can certainly expect greater fireworks on the pitch than they witnessed off it.
(Akarsh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer who contributes to various publications. He tweets here.)