We want Indian football in top 100 in 3 years: AIFF chief

Sep 18, 2010 |

mumbai

Tags:

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) on Saturday said it wants to see the country's national team breach the top 100 of the world football rankings within three years.

"Our aim is to break into the top 100 in three years. We have been sliding in the rankings consistently. We need to develop the infrastructure as well as concentrate on grass roots level development.

That is possible only by making it totally professional," AIFF president Praful Patel said at a media conference here. Mr Patel, also Union civil aviation minister, was speaking at a function to send off two south Mumbai school boys, Hussain Vahanvaty (St Mary’s) and Shaun Fernandes (St Peters), for a six-week training stint with the English club Queen's Park Rangers.

The duo was picked through a talent hunt programme initiated by South Mumbai MP Milind Deora in 2009. The AIFF chief said all the I-League clubs of the country have been given time till February next to become totally professional outfits by fulfilling all the licensing criteria laid down by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

"In October we will have an audit of all these clubs and by February the full details of the clubs fulfilling the AFC laid down licensing criteria will be out," Mr Patel said.

"FIFA president Sepp Blatter and AFC chief (Mohammed bin Hammam) are clear that if football is to be called a truly global game, it has to catch up big time in India." he said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/33445" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-cb4b10898defc7b421614047695c8ea1" value="form-cb4b10898defc7b421614047695c8ea1" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85440384" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>