Fifa may emulate IPL

National football coach Bob Houghton believes the Indian Premier League has grabbed the attention of Fifa, football’s governing body, which is eyeing a similar project in the sport.

In an interview to goal.com, Houghton says the game is on the verge of some exciting changes. “If you look at the IPL, it has generated such an enormous amount of revenue because of television coverage. FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) are eyeing the same possibilities in football. So there is big support and one of the reasons I’m here (in Barcelona) is that there is a FIFA initiative with the All Indian Football Federation. So it’s definitely a country that’s going to move forward. But in order to do that they have to grasp a modern approach to the domestic game.”

While Houghton anticipates the changes, he remains sceptical about the national league. “The domestic structure is so poor that when the boys are not in the national team and in the club structure, it is not good for them. The domestic competition is dominated by foreigners really. I mean, in my first year, there were only 10 teams in the I-League. So that’s 110 players and everyone has got three foreigners, so if you take them and the goalkeepers out of the equation, it means you only have 70 boys playing professional football in a country of 1.3 billion...”