“Everything is new for me, but It’s alright. I am very excited and I will try to do my best for Dynamos and for football fans in India”, said Alessandro Del Piero, the former Juventus captain and Italian world champion, upon his arrival to Delhi earlier this week.
Wait a minute. India? Football? Excitement? Fans?
The short answer is yes and the interesting answer is that just like the Prince of Turin, more former football stars are currently heading to south-east Asia. Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg, David Trezeguet, Luis Garcia, Marco Materazzi, David James and Nicolas Anelka are about to show some skills in the new league that will start on October 12th, in order to encourage the Indian audience to embrace the world’s number one sport - Football.
India already has a football league, the I-League, but it isn’t rising. The I-League is suffering from bad management and coaching, low level of facilities, a lack of investment and order in the academies. The average attendance is less than 1,000 spectators per match and an intermediate quality of games and players. There is no doubt that a deep change was needed. India’s popular sport is Cricket, and the new football league, the ISL (Indian Super League), is aiming to be the game-changer.
The star players are only the ‘face’ of this project while some European clubs are involved in the ‘backstage’ - Atletico Madrid (Spain), Feyenoord Rotterdam (Holland) and Fiorentina (Italy). Now they are owning in partnership teams in the new league (Atletico Kolkata, Delhi Dynamos and Pone City respectively). Those clubs investments are not only through money and connections but also through professional resources such as coaches, physiotherapists, statistical analysts and more.
Businessmen and several companies have also invested big amounts of money in the stadiums, clubs and teams, to make sure that there is no missing detail.
Now, one should ask: “This formula failed to bring mass improvement in Qatar and the Emirates, so why should it succeed in India, which already has a much more popular sport?”. The answer is simple. The Indian people are a large market-cut of football consumers. The English Premier League alone attracts more than 40 million Indian viewers daily.
The potential is out there, and it’s huge. Will the ISL be a success? As our friends in India would like to say: सबकुछमिलेगा, Sab Kuch Milega, Everything is possible. Check the ISL's Promo.