The Circadian Circus

On Indian football and its bizarre knack for comedy and apathy

Friday evening, 8pm British Summer Time. Dominik Szoboszlai rolls a white Puma football to Virgil van Dijk, and just like that, the world’s favourite show spins back to life. The Premier League - beamed to 189 of 193 UN nations, watched in more than 900 million homes - is back with a new season. JioStar shells out $20 million yearly just to bring this spectacle to Indian living rooms.

Meanwhile, on the same evening, the 78th anniversary of India’s independence from the British, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) was doing what it does best: organise meetings about meetings. In fact, meetings and press conferences have taken up the entire breadth of AIFF's calendar for the last month. If you walk into their office right now, you’re likely to find a room full of legal counsels - some representing the federation, some sent by Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL), and the rest carrying the agony of eleven Indian Super League clubs.

As you read this, the Indian Super League (ISL) - India’s primary domestic football competition - has been placed on hold.

Organised by one body (FSDL) and governed by another (AIFF), the mobility of the ISL is dependent on the Master Rights Agreement (MRA) signed by both organisations. The current MRA expires in December 2025, midway through the usual September-March season calendar.

On July 11th, FSDL sent a formal notice to the AIFF and every ISL club, informing them that while discussions have been afoot for many months, “they remain inconclusive at this time. In the absence of a confirmed contractual framework beyond December, we find ourselves unable to effectively plan, organise, or commercialise the 2025–26 ISL season.”

Many of India’s best footballers are stuck at home, scrolling through their Instagram explore page, unsure of when they have to report for pre-season. Bengaluru FC, Odisha FC, and Chennaiyin FC have already suspended all operations, including salaries for playing and support staff for their senior men’s teams. More teams are likely to follow.

The true force of the crisis, however, is felt somewhere deeper in the ecosystem. The players, troubled as they are, are well-paid. Coaches too. To a smaller extent, the backroom staff can scrape by. But it’s those backstage - match officials, drivers, janitors, scorecard operators, logistics managers etc - hired for a season, paid a pittance, who have their livelihood stalled.

Times of India reports that nine match referees have already expressed their anxiety to the federation. “The lack of certainty regarding continuation of ISL has created uncertainty around our future and could compel us to seek alternative employment, which would not only impact our livelihoods but also affect the continuity and development of professional refereeing in India.”

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On December 9, 2010, the All India Football Federation signed away fifteen years of commercial rights to Reliance Industries and the International Management Group (IMG) for INR 700 crore. The deal was meant to rescue Indian football. The I-League, successor to the National Football League, was haemorrhaging the federation and its sponsors. Zee Sports, too, pulled out of their broadcasting agreement two months earlier, leaving the AIFF scrambling. Into this void stepped Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, partnering with IMG, the global sports management colossus.

By September 2013, Football Sports Development Limited had been formally set up as a Reliance subsidiary. It was intended as the vehicle for Indian football’s overhaul - a company that would handle the business of the game, leaving the federation to govern. FSDL entered the arrangement as the AIFF’s commercial partner, with a remit that extended well beyond sponsorships or advertising, and with a set of administrative powers that were unusually broad for Indian sport.

Six weeks later, on October 21, 2013, the Indian Super League was officially launched. It was a franchise-based competition modelled on the Indian Premier League (IPL), a cocktail of glitter, money and fame, carrying a nametag with that golden word in Indian administration: progress.

When the bidding opened in March 2014, thirty parties - some earnest, some hungry - picked up invitation documents. The final list of successful bidders read like the guest list for a party at Antillia: Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Ranbir Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham, amongst other celebrities and conglomerates.

Truth be told, most franchise owners were drawn to the name on the letterhead: Reliance. They were buying into something more than just football. This was a chance to slip into the Ambani ecosystem, with its open buffet of business-partners, marketing machinery, and photo-ops with the right people.

The ISL was sold as a dream, a vision to do for football what the IPL had done for cricket. But football is not cricket, not in India, and the blueprint had its caveats and missing pages. There was, tucked away in the fine print, a detail as bold as it was quiet: no relegation, no jeopardy. For the owners and their teams, it was a promise of comfort, a guarantee that the journey would be smooth, or at least, uninterrupted.

Even outside the boardrooms, the idea of ISL was intoxicating. Imagine: Alessandro Del Piero bending the ball past goalkeepers in Delhi; Luis Garcia slaloming through defences in Calcutta; Robert Pires marshalling the wing in Mumbai. Ooof! The Delhi team even flew in Roberto Carlos during one of the early seasons. For the ardent football fan in India, raised on a diet of ESPN and StarSports coverage, accustomed to red-eyed nights for European football, this was like a video game coming to life.

I remember leaving work early and boarding metros to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, heart thumping at the prospect of watching Del Piero and Roberto Carlos in the flesh. It was as sad as it was embarrassing to watch the 42-year-old Carlos - rotund, immobile, tired, breathless - launching wild shots because 10,000 people were bellowing “shoot!” every time he got the ball. Del Piero, on the doorstep of retirement, wasn’t much better, playing ten games and scoring just once.

Crowds kept turning up with mental images of footballing royalty. Images that were, on average, at least a decade old. What they got instead was closer to a charity game between YouTubers and filmstars.

Mrs. Ambani, founder and chairperson of FSDL, was everywhere. Her face, her voice, her invocation to “Let’s football” was stitched into every poster and ceremony. At the supposed moment of revolution, the torch was not passed to Bhaichung Bhutia or Chuni Goswami. Instead, we got Nita Ambani, first lady of India’s wealthiest family, who lives in a glass tower in Mumbai, who will probably struggle to tell a pass from a cross, presiding over the entire spectacle like a monarch. The imagery told a story by itself.

Yet, beneath the sequined overlay, the threads were silently unspooling. By the second season, the partnerships with European football giants - Feyenoord, Atletico de Madrid, Fiorentina - had completely collapsed. By 2018, even IMG had seen enough, selling their stake back to Reliance, leaving the ship to be steered by a single hand.

The league itself was caught between aspiration and identity. The ISL existed parallel to, not within, India’s football structure. It was essentially a cosmetic tournament, without the full blessings of FIFA or the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). As a result, ISL teams could not participate in Asian club competitions - the AFC Champions League and the AFC Cup.

Which, as you can imagine, was not palatable for the new custodians of the sport. They didn’t want to live in the shadows. The campaign for legitimacy began, a procession of meetings, memos, and blank cheques, stretching from the summer of 2016 into the dusk of 2019. Only then, after years of negotiation, did the ISL finally become the official football league of India.

Today, all of India’s best football players are part of the ISL ecosystem. The team list has some colourful names too, alongside those that were once the backbone of Indian football, now rebranded for the 21st century, their names prefixed and suffixed with barf-inducing labels. For example, Mohun Bagan, the oldest club in India, have been vandalised into Mohun Bagan SuperGiants, because business tycoon Sanjeev Goenka needs his initials stamped on everything his money touches.

The current agreement between FSDL and the AIFF was signed in 2010, a world that already feels sepia-tinted. Their friction is about as old too. Do you know when the AIFF finally put together a committee to “discuss” the renewal of the MRA, the new terms, and how to find a middle ground with FSDL? This April.

There are reasons for this intentional procrastination. For the last 15 years, FSDL had reliably dropped fifty crores a year into the AIFF’s lap, separate from their investment into ISL and its teams. The AIFF could do as it pleased with the money. This arrangement was a kind of annuity, a passive income stream that required no sweat, no vision, no contribution to the league.

An administrator, with an eagle’s view of Indian football’s fission chamber, understands some of FSDL’s displeasure. “The FSDL is far from perfect, but it has poured a lot of money into Indian football over the last eleven years. And the effort has yielded almost zero results. Neither the league has risen in stature nor has the Indian men’s national team benefitted significantly. So, after a decade of financial losses, they are adamant something has to change.”

The air between FSDL and AIFF-adjacent bodies has turned properly toxic. Ashish Negi, co-founder and CEO of KhelNow, adds, “There have also been occasions where legal counsels have lied about the MRA details to the court.”

FSDL, agitated and insistent on change, sent a new contract over. According to the renewed terms, they won’t be paying AIFF the 50 crores annual fee just for the rights anymore. Instead, they proposed a three-way split between FSDL, the clubs, and AIFF - everyone sharing actual profits. AIFF would get 14%, FSDL 26%. The AIFF have summarily rejected the contract. With the new terms, they’d actually have to earn their investment.

Negi mentions that the communication between the FSDL and Kalyan Chaubey’s committee at the AIFF have completely broken down. The federation, it seems, lacks both the professionalism and imagination to figure out alternative options.

So here we are, watching this Mexican standoff. Neither side budging, the clubs marooned in a bureaucratic limbo, powerless to so much as knock on the Supreme Court’s door thanks to the fine print of old agreements. The impasse is total, the sense of drift palpable.

Meanwhile, the AFC Champions League Two draw has just concluded in Kuala Lumpur. FC Goa have been placed in Group D, along with Al-Nassr from Saudi Arabia. Which means Sandeep Jhingan might soon be marking Cristiano Ronaldo. And there is a high chance that he is yanked out of cold storage, without any miles on his calves, and thrown into the den against the most lethal forward in Asia.

On Monday, 18th August, the AIFF will “orally mention” the matter at the Supreme Court, post which they might file an application to the court, asking for intervention. The verdict, or any intervention, will then take its own time.

Ashish Negi is keen to impress the scale of the trek even if the Supreme Court intervenes. “Getting a six-month extension on the MRA is our best case scenario. But to go from there to actually finalising a schedule for the league is a herculean task. Remember, every sort of contract and agreement is stuck right now. The AIFF and FSDL will have to figure out a window for the league, float tenders for rights and broadcast, then come up with a schedule that will inevitably be congested. We’re looking at a December start, but only if everything goes smoothly here on.” Before I ask him, he lets out a sigh and continues, “If everything doesn’t, which is a real possibility, the league may not happen.”

Without a functional league, the AIFF now stands at the edge of a cliff, toes dangling over the abyss of AFC sanctions. Meanwhile, franchise-owners are bleeding money. Someone close to a few ISL clubs tells me, “Clubs are staring at a potential loss of approx. Rs 30 crore. That’s why many clubs have not started pre-season, so that they can then bring the Force Majeure clause into action. If they start training, they’ll have to honour the full contract of players and staff.”

Each week lost to the self-serving arithmetic of administrators is a wound to Indian football’s already anaemic calendar. The ISL season usually runs from September to late March. You cannot play league football in India between April and July, through heatwaves and soul-sapping humidity.

So, for a December 2025 start, which Negi suggests as an optimistic outcome, everything will need to be locked in by early October. And for that to happen, the smaller but significant steps - agreements, tenders, schedules, broadcast deals - have to be in place by mid to late September. That gives the AIFF and FSDL just about a month to clean up all this mess. It’s not impossible, but don’t make any bets.

Push the start any later than December and what’s left is a league crammed into a matchbox. Three months of relentless squeeze, teams playing every other day until hamstrings snap and ligaments come apart. Meanwhile, the men’s national team, ranked 133rd in the world, nearly 50 places below Curacao, will also have to play their qualifiers and other key games with undercooked and overseasoned players. Hallelujah.

Kalyan Chaubey, president of the AIFF, has been trying to shirk responsibility for this mess. In fact, he’s aggrieved that the AIFF is getting any flak at all. It’s a nice tactic, to deflect attention into the micro-event and divert conversation about the bigger picture, a pattern that has now been evident for decades.

“If you want to know what the current system would look like without the ISL, all you need to do is look at the wholly-AIFF run I-League,” ESPN’s Anirudh Menon writes here. “Months after the conclusion of the 2024-25 season, we’re still not sure who the winners are (sorry, Churchill Brothers), because that’s pending a decision at the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Switzerland… Churchill were awarded the trophy in a grand ceremony and then promptly asked to give it back.”

Chaubey himself ascended to the presidency in 2022 via a hurried election, the result of FIFA suspending the AIFF for failing to finalise a constitution and organise fresh elections after Praful Patel was shown the door.

The more you leaf through the AIFF files, the worse the apathy gets.

In June 2024, Igor Stimac was unceremoniously sacked from the national team job. India's performance had completely tanked over twelve months, with losses piling up and ranking dropping with practically every game. Stimac didn’t have a compelling case for extension anyway, but the sacking unravelled like a soap opera.

There was a whole episode about monetary compensation because he was sacked mid-contract. AIFF tried to wiggle their way with minimum outlay - familiar territory for Indian organisations - prompting Stimac to take the matter to FIFA, asking for a fair resolution.

But the most damning indictment of a country with a million mutinies and a billion aspirations came via Stimac's open press-conference after he was officially let go. The lash-out was operatic.

“Your football (Indian football) is imprisoned. It will take a couple of decades for things to improve, which I don't see happening,” he started. “It was impossible for me to continue without enough support. I was fed up with the lies, the unfulfilled promises, and being surrounded by people who are only thinking about their own interests. My staff was working mostly without any compensation. The team manager was working without any sleep, managing multiple teams, knowing that we are not going to get enough time for preparation.”

And if you think that’s bad, a national team coach openly calling out the administrators for not having a good structural framework around the sport, wait until you hear this.

“We were working without GPS equipment, without VO cameras, which I asked for long ago to analyze our training sessions. I also told them if you have a problem with the budget, I would do it, but it was not allowed, and AIFF also didn’t do it. Throughout, we were renting match analysts from Goa. We were in fact stealing the platforms from Goa FC. That's how we were working.”

Nothing about this is new. Stephen Constantine’s book, From Delhi to the Den, has a chapter dedicated to his first stint as the Indian national team coach. He tells quite the story about a national camp right after he took over the corner office. “I went to the stand, where the players were staying. There were six or seven rooms with bunk beds in. Water dripped down the walls. The ceilings were stained. The air was sticky.”

Twenty-two years separate Constantine’s dripping walls from Stimac’s borrowed analysts. The only thing that’s changed is the Indian ranking - it's gotten worse, while hundreds of crores get pumped into its ecosystem every year, with as much accountability as you show your gym trainer after a long weekend.

Crowd in Aizawl for a league game. Credit: YouTube

“India doesn’t care about football.”

Regardless of your proximity to Indian sport, I’m confident you’ve heard this sentence. Maybe it was a conversation during the FIFA World Cup, as Brazil were playing Belgium, and you were in a room of people awestruck at the beauty nations with a tenth of Uttar Pradesh’s population can produce. Maybe it was your social media timeline screaming its agony and frustration into the void. Or maybe it was you, nursing the wounds from watching India lose to Guam, watching generations of European football pass by, exasperated that we can’t produce one man good enough to play in the top leagues, nevermind the top teams.

It’s a lie. India has always had a place in its heart for football.

Mohun Bagan’s creation predates the Bombay Pentangular - India’s oldest cricket competition. On this Independence Day long weekend, Mohun Bagan are amongst the eight clubs playing in the quarter-finals of the Durand Cup - the oldest existing football competition in Asia and the fifth oldest in the world.

Bagan’s opponents in the quarters are East Bengal, their cross-town rivals, and the other half of the fevered, fractious Calcutta Derby. Decades before ONGC, Reliance, or IMG invested in Indian football, attendances for a derby would routinely exceed 70,000, at times cross 120,000.

The Indian men’s national team were once very good too, winning gold at the 1962 Asian Games and finishing fourth at the 1956 Olympics. In the ‘62 gold medal match, India beat South Korea 2-1. Today, South Korea are 23rd in the world, preparing for their eleventh consecutive men’s World Cup next year. India, 133rd, can’t even get into the Asian playoffs.

The apathy consistently, inevitably comes from the administrators, whether it be puppets from a large business conglomerate or those actually responsible for running a sport. Unlike badminton, shooting, or wrestling, which thrive on individual excellence and private benefactors, football needs an entire village to function. And every time there’s a flicker of hope, someone at the top of the pyramid steps on the wire and plunges the entire sport back into darkness. The village doesn’t lack electricity. It lacks figureheads who won’t sabotage their own grid.

That the women’s team keeps raising the bar is a matter of equal amounts pride and fear. They’re flying despite the gravity of the system underneath, but one day, the downforce might be too much.