An eagle circling over Kerala football

By John Cheeran

The barren state of football in Kerala can be best gauged from the eerie silence at the empty Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi when great powers of Indian football such as Mohun Bagan, Churchill Brothers, Salgaocar Goa, Sporting United, Kolkata, and Shillong Lajong battle it out. 

In the first two days, four matches were played out in front of stray spectators, Kerala Football Association (KFA) president K M I Mather, probables for the state Santosh Trophy squad and a 25-odd strong media contingent. Not even a fly from the nearby garbage heap in Kaloor dared to enter the KFA’s fortress. 

All the visiting team coaches and players TOI has spoken to in the last few days are shocked beyond belief at the rotten state of Kerala football and the kind of facilities offered by KFA to them.

Derrick Pereira, Salgaocar coach and former India player, who had led Goa to its first junior national crown at a packed Maharajas College Ground in 1980 still remembers the roar from the football loving Kochi crowd. “Football lovers in Kochi have this rare quality of encouraging any side that plays well. Who shooed them away,” asks Pereira.

The last time a club from Kerala kissed the Federation Cup was in 1990 and 1991. The last time Kerala won Santosh Trophy was in 2004. The current national squad has a lone player from Kerala, C K Vineeth.

Who killed Kerala football and the Malayali football fan? May be KFA’s long–serving president, K M I Mather would know. A seasoned politician and real estate tycoon based in Kochi, 73-year-old Mather is one of the general secretaries of Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee. For more than a decade he has been clinging on to the KFA president’s post. It is a pity that former Union sports minister and Congress leader Ajay Maken’s proposal that all 70-year-old sports body chiefs should quit is ignored by the KFA chieftain.

It is, however, important to note that Federation Cup matches at Manjeri in Malappuram district are drawing crowds to the tune of 25,000. But, then, KFA can take little credit for such a heart-warming turnout. It’s Malappuram’s sevens football culture that is coming to fore, a culture that KFA dreads and tries repeatedly to stamp out.

It is Kerala’s sevens football culture, not KFA’s apparatchiks, that produced legends such as I M Vijayan, C V Pappachan, V P Sathyan, Sharafali and Jo Paul Anchery.

It is quite evident that Mather has his priorities elsewhere. KFA has been successful in its campaign to include Eagles FC in the ongoing Federation Cup. It is strange why All India Football Federation (AIFF) picked Eagles FC, a club that failed to qualify for the six-team final round of the second division league last season. Four teams that are part of the second division league this season --Royal Wahingdoh FC (16pts), Aizwal FC (13pts), Kenkre Sports FC (10 pts), PIFA Sports (6pts) had performed better than Eagles FC which ended up with a mere 5 points in the league in 2012-13. 

Despite repeated email requests and text messages, AIFF spokesperson Nilanjan Datta, usually a loquacious man, refused to come clean on Eagles’s participation but industry sources said Eagles FC was given a ticket to Federation Cup to bring in local supporters since the tournament is being played in Kerala. 

Interestingly, Eagles FC has 13 players on loan from IMG-Reliance, which has a 15-year, Rs 700 crore commercial rights deal with the AIFF, in its roster, after the sudden postponement of the ambitious Indian Super League. A team that is in the tournament ostensibly to add local flavour, however, only fields four Malayali players in its playing XI.

Last Saturday in the 40th Kerala State Football championship held at Wadakkanchery, two-time former Federation Cup winners Kerala Police had defeated Eagles FC to lift the trophy. A few weeks earlier, Eagles FC had gone down to Kerala Police in the semifinal of the 39th edition of Kerala State Football championship held at Meenangadi. It only goes to prove that Eagles FC is not even the best side in Kerala.

And consider this. Which self-respecting football association stages its two annual state championships within a span of weeks? Is this the way to promote the game?

C V Pappachan who was instrumental in Kerala Police winning two  Federation Cups, along with IM Vijayan, says Kerala football is languishing because there are no tournaments for players to show their wares. “We have players but where are the tournaments? Without  tournaments, how our players will improve the game? Who is responsible for running the game in the state,” asks Pappachan. 

Pappachan, a playmaker par excellence, points out that Kerala Police had beaten Eagles FC twice in succession in the 39th and the 40th state championships but KFA did not present the case of the two-time winners to the AIFF. “The reasons are obvious. KFA bosses have pushed for a team in which they have stakes,” says Pappachan.

Pappachan points out how in 1990 when Federation Cup was being staged in Thrissur, there was a qualifying tournament for teams from South India. “Titanium had won a direct entry by virtue of being state champions. Kerala Police played the qualifier, won the spot and won the championship,” said Papapachan. 

That no one cares two hoots for a team propped up by a consortium of political and business tycoons is quite clear by now by the boycott of the tournament by football fans. It explains a lot that one of the promoters of Eagles FC is Mather himself, a flagrant instance of conflict of interest. How can Mather, who is one of the vice-presidents of AIFF, also own a club and push for its inclusion in AIFF tournaments?

With AIFF pumping in Rs 3.5 crore to organize the event and footing the travelling and lodging expenses of the clubs, staging the tournament should have been a cakewalk for KFA, unlike in 1977 when Kochi staged the very first Federation Cup which was an unmitigated financial disaster, according to former KFA secretary K Bodhanandan. 

KFA’s inept organization skills have invited the wrath of all the clubs that are playing in Kochi and Manjeri. In Kochi, all the eight clubs are forced to have practice sessions at the match venue, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, owing to abysmal conditions at the KFA scheduled practice grounds.

Not just that. With three of India’s top clubs jostling for space  during practice sessions simultaneously, half the ground is being taken by Celebrity Cricket League players and officials every day and the venerable KFA leadership has not moved either its left foot or the right one.

In Manjeri, too, the scene is not any different, forcing Dempo SC’s Australian coach Arthur Papas to take to Twitter. One of his tweets read: “I’m left speechless at the incompetence of how football is run in this country, no rhyme or reason to anything.” In turn, his associates have asked Papas whether he is asking his players to have a roll in the sand after practice, poking fun at the third world’s  attempts to run the game.

KFA’s unprofessional attitude is a clear pointer to India’s 154th spot in FIFA rankings. And imagine, the KFA wants to host Under-17 FIFA World Cup in Kochi in 2017!

Not only has KFA failed to offer basic facilities to participating teams but it has been petty and arrogant in not inviting the heroes who delivered Federation Cup twice for Kerala to attend the matches.  It seems KFA prefers to have empty seats around them to the experienced boots who kicked Kerala football in the right direction.