The All India Football Federation's (AIFF) baby leagues project is likely to see the first pilot run in Mumbai in early July, more than four months later than it was originally meant to be unveiled as a step to increase participation in football at an earlier age and to encourage greater round-the-year engagement with the sport across the country. The project was conceived and driven by Richard Hood, AIFF's head of youth development, and Savio Medeira, the federation's technical director.

Hood,...

I-League winning coach Khalid Jamil was on Wednesday unveiled as the new coach of East Bengal, with reports of his contract being worth Rs 1.25 crore (about $200,000) in yearly wages making him among the highest-earning Indian coaches in domestic football.

Jamil, who guided Aizawl FC to the first national league crown for a team from the north-east, goes to Kolkata for the first time as player and coach. And while it would have been normal for him to have moved to a bigger club had the disruption...

Exactly a week since the All India Football Federation (AIFF) announced the successful bids of Bengaluru FC and Tata Steel to operate teams in the franchise-based Indian Super League (ISL) from 2017-18, the air of uncertainty over the future of the I-League, the existing official league of India, continues.

The AIFF may have made the announcement about the expansion of the I-League, but ESPN understands they themselves are yet to finalise the exact nature of the forthcoming domestic season. This...

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has, in several recent amendments to its constitution, sought to significantly expand the powers of its honorary president in a manner that, at worst, could violate the proposed national sports code and at the least be a workaround for some of the limitations the federation would face under it.

The incumbent - someone who'd given "meritorious service to football" - would be allowed to participate in general body meetings of the AIFF, as well as represent it...