I-League club representatives to meet AIFF-IMG

Jul 23, 2013

Tags:

Mumbai: Six representatives of the I-League Professional Football Clubs Association will meet officials of All India Football Federation soon over the contentious issue of the proposed IPL-style league, the club owners said today.
The I-League club owners, eleven of them in attendance and three others giving their consent to the decision taken, met here today and agreed to AIFF's suggestion for an across the table meeting, it was announced today.
"A letter has come from Kushal Das (AIFF's general secretary) asking for a joint meeting with IMG (AIFF's marketing partners). We today decided that six of our members would attend the meeting," said I-League club Pune FC's owner Nandan Piramal at a media conference.
"Raj Gomes (president of IPFCA), Chirag Tanna (its secretary), two of our vice presidents, Valanka Alemao (CEO of Churchill Brothers) and Mustafa Ghouse (from newly formed I-League club JSW) will attend the meeting on our behalf," said Piramal.
Piramal said the meeting was basically to find out how the two-month long league proposed to be held early next year will benefit Indian football.
"We would like to know how such a league will benefit Indian football, I-League - which is the premier football tournament in the country - and the I-League clubs. We are going into this meeting with an open mind and without any preconceived notion," Piramal said.
"We would like to know whether it is just about making money for someone or for improving Indian football," he said.
Valanka Alemao, daughter of Churchill Brothers' owner, said that AIFF should not take the clubs for granted.
"The message that is sent out today by us to the AIFF is not to take us for granted," she said.
It was also revealed that none of the club owners have any idea about the contents of the 15-year agreement signed up by AIFF with IMG-R in 2010.
"They say it has got a confidentiality clause," she said.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/244874" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-80781061437ec64f40b7cbab5f73350e" value="form-80781061437ec64f40b7cbab5f73350e" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85608409" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>