FIFA official urges India to expand women’s league

After five-time winners India lost to Nepal in the semi-finals to bow out of the SAFF Women’s Championship on Friday, Shaji Prabhakaran, newly-appointed secretary-general of the All India Football Federation (AIFF), tweeted to call it “one of the worst outings in the SAFF Championships” adding it was time for a “detailed analysis and replan” for the team’s development.

In the current Indian women’s football ecosystem, that plan includes hosting some multi-nation tournaments—AFC Asian Cup earlier this year and the FIFA U-17 World Cup next month, for example. The national teams will compete in them as hosts, playing international matches on exposure tours and holding a domestic league that lasts a little over a month.

On a visit to Mumbai ahead of the U-17 World Cup, Arijana Demirovic, FIFA head of women’s football development, said expanding the duration of the Indian Women’s League (IWL) should be priority. Started in 2016 with six teams, IWL now has 12 teams, yet this year’s edition started on April 15 and ended on May 26. In comparison, the men’s Indian Super League will run from October 2022 to March 2023.

Arijana said: “I strongly believe it should be 5-6 months. For us, it is a priority—to work with the federation (AIFF) in the coming months to make sure it’s something that we address.”

She said. “A lot of players from these developing associations don’t play abroad and have to build their own base. So if their players are playing six months in their own league, it probably has a better effect on the performance of the national team.”

Arijana wants more opportunities for women players to compete across age groups, and not just crank it up in the lead-up to hosting continental or global tournaments.

“Striking that balance of national team activity and a stronger league is important. We have certain windows in which national teams can play, but outside of it club football should be taking place,” she said. “Having more national team matches, looking into how we can utilitise those windows, making sure we don’t play one match if we can play three within the same window. But you have to make sure that’s not the only opportunity for players because the results might not be there, and then the sustainability of that gets questioned.”

Arijana hopes the U-17 World Cup brings sustainable long-term progress to Indian women’s football. “On my first visit to India in 2014, certain structures existed, but for me it was almost seeing them begin. Then there’s been some development, some things have stopped or we’ve moved away from different initiatives,” she said. “There is always a lot of work to be done. I hope to see progress and development over the years, because I do believe India has quite a lot of potential.”