Opinion on Indian Football: Sanjiv Saran (Saran Presents)

At the Soccerex European Forum last week in Manchester Indian football was well represented with over 20 people there from federations, the government, institutions, agencies and clubs. I spoke to some of these people to get their views on Indian football and will run a series across the week with these very interesting different view points.

I start the series with my good, old friend Sanjiv Saran Mehra (Founding CEO & Director, Saran Presents) who organises corporates sports and school football in Mumbai.


Where do we stand with Indian football today?

I think it has a long, long way to go. I don't think its infrastructure development only which will solve our problems, you need to spread the sport at the grassroot level. Right now we are only focusing on the big cities, showing the popularity of football in the big cities. I think what you need to do is to get into the smaller cities, the 'B' and 'C' towns. I think the onus should really be on the state associations who through their districts need to take the route of taking it into the smaller towns. That is the only way you can popularise the sport.

You also need to have a system and a structure where not only the elite schools who have access to grounds, football competitions and championships. Its got to be across the board. So its got to be the under-privileged schools, the municipal schools, the NGOs because thats where the talent and the skills are, that's where the hunger is. So I think its got to be long thoroughbred plan and vision which needs to be implemented over the next five to 10 years. Thats the only way you can see results coming in.

Just infrastructure by itself will not sort things out. You need to attack the grassroot level in a pyramid format. We start at the grassroot level, spread it out and start working upwards.

According to me thats the simple strategy to move forward!