The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (WWC), now in its final breathless week, is already a triumph, for the football it has put on show and from there, women’s sport, audience engagement and dynamic marketing/promotion. This is the first WWC featuring 32 teams and it’s never felt unwieldy. Following the departure of Japan on Saturday, we will have a new champion. Only Sweden have been to a final before – that too, 20 years ago. Planet Football’s WWC is bursting with new colours and flavours and what is certain, yes, certain, India can and should be one of them – in our lifetimes.
During the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar, a former member of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) executive council, Anjali Shah, had said India’s women could make it to the 2031 World Cup. Between now and then, is the 2027 WWC and that’s where the women around the Indian team currently are impatient to reach. Let’s remember that the Indian women are ranked No.60 in the FIFA rankings and No.10 in Asia. Asia has six direct qualifying slots for the 2027 WWC. The top five AFC nations – Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam – are at the World Cup. Ahead of India, there’s Chinese Taipei, Thailand, Philippines, Uzbekistan and Myanmar. With the right energy and direction, both the players’ desires and Shah’s prediction somehow appear do-able.
In the AIFF’s Vision 2047 Strategic Roadmap released in January women’s football was promised its own department, greater resources and opportunities. As of today, out of an AIFF budget of ₹134 crore for 2023-24, women’s football has been allotted ₹26.3 crore, AIFF secretary general Shaji Prabhakaran saying, “which is almost double of the amount spent in 2022-23″. The AIFF he says, is “likely to get further support” for this season under the FIFA women’s development programme. The AIFF has a women’s department, Prabhakaran said, headed by Hem Kaur Sidhu which works with its women’s committee, “in an integrated fashion”. While details of the committee are available on its website, there is nothing easily accessible about a women’s department, but let’s not quibble at this point.
What India’s women players need is more quality game time and wages to keep them in the game. A minimum of 50 matches a year through clubs and international matches is AIFF women’s committee member and former India goalkeeper Chitra Gangadharan’s ideal estimate. But given that even the Indian men do not play that many games, let’s at least try to set the bar at 25 to start with.
The Indian Women’s League (IWL) has gone from six teams in 2016-17 to 16 last season, except that the 2022-23 IWL was a ghastly train crash of an event. Held over two weeks in the Ahmedabad summer with matches starting at 4pm in 40 degrees Celsius, with clubs complaining about accommodation, food, ground conditions, refereeing and general treatment of teams and owners. The ‘silver lining’ in the eyes of an organiser – the players were given a small box of dry fruits, with an owner asking, “has anyone else ever given you dry fruits anywhere?” A club owner said, “it was like they were saying we are topping all the other sh** arrangements with dry fruits – so you have to be grateful.”
This season’s IWL will be held in December in a two-league system of eight teams each, the top eight finishers from last season making up the elite competition. The IWL will be a reflection of the AIFF’s intent and direction around women’s football. Its newly appointed deputy general secretary M Satyanarayan says, “We are way off the level that is being seen at the World Cup, but we have 40-50 young girls who are competent and it is important for us to stay focussed on the women’s game.” He points to two junior events: the under-14 national championships to be held in Amritsar (Tier 1 with 16 teams) and Belgaum (Tier 2 with 20 teams) in September and the under-16 nationals in October.
There is some tension between the women’s clubs and the AIFF around the demand that each of the IWL clubs have 10 players on annual contracts of around ₹3.25 lakh a year. For public sector units like SSB or a Chhattisgarh’s Mata Rukmini FC who come out of an ashram in Bastar, a commitment of around ₹32 lakh a year on player salaries could change the equation of participation itself.
Satyanarayan says there are discussions on at the moment in the AIFF about giving a subsidy of ₹25 lakh per IWL team to support their travel for home and away.
Gangadharan says the new women’s committee will also focus on the development of women coaches with pro licence, to add to the 11 A licence women coaches. The ₹26 crore for women’s football has a long and meandering route to travel.
Satyanarayan has seen the rewards of investing time and energy in women’s football. As secretary of the Karnataka State Football Association, greater impetus towards women’s football saw exponential change: “we had four clubs around four-five years ago and now we have 40 women’s clubs in the state with some highly talented women’s players in the 14-15 age group.” The Karnataka Women’s League is a rare three-tier Indian women’s state league with a 10-team Super League at the top followed by an A division with eight teams and a B division, which is a nine-a-side league for 12-15 starter clubs.
In Mumbai, Shah has her own dream. “My target is to have a women’s team – of any age group – representing each of the 766 districts of India,” she says. Her support will be to supply each team with coaches and a venue, be it a school or a public playground, and training to compete against others like them. She reckons it will cost around ₹2-3 crore a year and doesn’t care people won’t take notice because it’s not a ₹100 crore mega idea. She says, “it’s a mad plan, but it’s a fun, ambitious plan.” It is mega in itself – ambition must be measured in vision, not cost.
