by Harmit Singh Kamboe

3 years, 2 titles and 1 dream

First off as Indians and as Indian football fans, hats off the Indian football team and the team management for the great win in the AFC Challenge Cup 2008.

Bob Houghton and his boys has given a fitting reply to the small minded people that have been questioning and pestering Bob publicly ever since India went down to Maldives in the SAFF Cup finals. By taking India to the 2011 Qatar Asian Cup, Bob and his boys have ensured that Bob's reign as India's football coach will remain one of the most successful tenures in India football. Two major titles (Nehru Cup and the AFC Challenge Cup) in three years is no ordinary achievement, considering the poor facilities, lack of foresight, planning and thinking that go into the making of Indian football.

Bob's reign has also shown how important it is to make significant achievements at the Asian level before we dream of participation at the World Cup. No effort should now be spared in getting the team ready for the best possible showing at the Asian Cup.

The real reason why the small minded people have been making malicious comments against Bob is plain old jealousy. What the Indian coaches cannot stand has been the large travel and preparation budget, and the free hand that Bob has been given. What the Indian coaches choose to conveniently forget is that Bob built his credentials over many years and he was able to secure the concessions from the AIFF on the basis of his global experience and success. The Indian coaches (in many cases through no fault of theirs) have not had similar successes or achievements and thus are placed at a disadvantage. But that is no justification for small minded back-biting.

I would like to pin-point the specific things that I believe are a true legacy of Bob's successful reign:

1. Adequate preparation
The success at both the Nehru Cup and the AFC Challenge Cup came as a result of good preparation where the team was together and more importantly travelled together. A team truly gels together when it travels together and the domestic distractions are totally removed. From now on, this should become a standard procedure for teams that participate in tournaments that India takes seriously.

2. Its the Coaching Team that makes a difference, not just the coach
Bob's tenure was also an eye opener for the football clubs and administrators that believe all one needs to do is to hire a single coach and everything will fall into place. Bob had a team of six people (Savio Medeira, Stanley Rozario, Marcus Antonio Pacheco, Suresh Babu, Dr. Badrinath and Pradip Chowdhury) at the senior men's team level in addition to Colin Toal (and another team of officials) who were shepherding and shaping new talent at the junior level. Each of these team members played an important role in bringing Indian football the two titles.

3. The Youth Team Development
After Islam Akhmedov, it was imperative that India hired a good, trusted hand for its youth teams. The fact that Bob and Colin knew each other from previous assignments was a bonus for India as they were able to collectively to ride on the Airtel/Bharti sponsorship of the U16 team and work on the players in the Indian football Olympic team. A steady supply of talent is imperative to the continued success of a sporting team. The results of this will follow in the years to come.
Despite the fact that Bob has managed to achieve a lot with virtually no new football talent emerging in India or any major football reform taking place in India, I believe we should not renew Bob's contract once it is over.
Bob has taken our existing players perhaps as far as they can go. For the next big leap in performance, it is hard to imagine that Bob with the existing set of players could be our salvation. While Bob had had some success as a coach, he did not have much luck in changing the basic, structural problems that plague Indian football.
What Indian football needs is two dynamic leaders. One, a coach or manager that can work with and oversee the on field performance of Team India (seniors, juniors). And the second, a CEO kind of a personality that can push the kind of structural reform through that we badly need and that the existing administrators do not have the courage or capacity to make.
Age is against Bob and we need to move to a younger and more dynamic coach and CEO personality set. We need someone that the Babus at the AIFF will respect, fear and be ashamed of being in his/her presence. The new coach and/or CEO should be someone who can force the changes that Bob wanted for Indian football but could not deliver. The list of those changes is long, but they are very critical. Without addressing the basic things that are holding Indian football back, we will continue to limit our own progress.

Some of those changes would be:

1. Santosh Trophy and the myriad of other tournaments in India, being classified as tournaments for youth teams.

2. I-League clubs being forced to have separate teams for the I-League and the local leagues.

3. Handing over the running of the I-League and the actual conduct of the matches to a private entity that can think of programs to pack the stadiums and attain high TV viewership.

4. Extending the I-League season and the number of teams (with an eye on greater national representation)

5. Creation of additional revenue streams for the AIFF, I-League and the players.

6. Sharing of TV revenues between the AIFF and the clubs.

7. Building the I-League Division II as a real league with home-and-away games

8. Creation of a standard set of youth training material in local Indian languages (text and video)

9. Expansion of the Bharti-AIFF Football Academy concept to each zone, region, state and city of the Indian union.

All of the initiatives above should result in creation of a larger pool of players that can be called upon for national duty. The loss at the SAFF Cup was due to lack of adequate bench strength (which is a result of poor long-term planning and lack of youth development) and that is India's real football enemy.
We thank Bob for the work he has done for the Indian team but we, the Indian football fans want more and we want it now. It is time the AIFF looked at hiring the likes of a Gus Hiddink, Fabio Capello, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Juergen Klinsmann or some from one of that calibre. Pay them what they want, get them the assistant and support staff that such coaches would want. And let's attach two or three Indian staffers with each such overseas staffer to imbibe everything they can.
We are not sick and tired of not being winners, but are sick and tired of not even trying or planning to be winners.
But deep down we know that the Indian officialdom lacks the balls for such radical thinking and change. Hiring a global expert will expose the Indian Babus to what we all know, their incompetence, their daily shenanigans, their practice of taking the tax payer for a ride, their preference of hiding behind titles and not being accountable for anything or anybody. We only need to look at the entire Ric Charlesworth episode in Indian Hockey to see how Indian sports administrator's value experts that can come in and want to help us.
After all, we are experts at cutting off our noses to spite others.