The Slow Collapse No One Wants to Own

Indian football’s problems aren’t new. They’ve just become impossible to look away from.

Ryan Williams debut in Indian Colors. Source : Olympics.com

Somewhere between the AIFF’s administrative theatre, clubs unable to pay their dues, and a national team tumbling to its worst FIFA ranking in nearly a decade, Indian football finds itself at a crossroads it has visited many times before — with the same people, the same excuses, and the same absence of consequences.

142nd — FIFA ranking at end of 2025

215+ days without a top-flight ISL match in 2025–26

₹50Cr annual revenue lost when FSDL deal collapsed

I. Young Players, No Doors

India’s under-20 team lost all their matches at the 2025 U-20 Challenge Series in Indonesia, scoring just one goal across three games. The under-17 side pulled off a remarkable win against Iran and earned an AFC U-17 Asian Cup berth — a genuinely exciting result. And those young players will now be handed over to a senior structure that has consistently failed to nurture, use, or even field them.

The senior team has cycled through coaches at a dizzying pace. Manolo Márquez departed in 2025 after defeats to Thailand and Hong Kong; Khalid Jamil stepped in mid-season. Each transition is sold as a reset, a new direction. In reality, the environment surrounding the team — wages withheld, leagues suspended, facilities in question — doesn’t change. Promising young players age out of youth systems and into a professional ecosystem that is either frozen or financially strained.

A generation of football-literate Indian kids is growing up watching the Premier League, La Liga, and the Champions League. They know what the game looks like at its best. And they know, perhaps better than anyone, that what they’re being offered domestically isn’t close.

India failed to qualify for the 2025 AFC U-20 Asian Cup, and the pattern of qualifying in SAFF (against South Asian neighbours) and exiting at Asian level has been frustratingly consistent for more than two decades. The pipeline works for its own sake, not as a feeder to anything meaningful.

II. Clubs That Cannot Afford to Play

When the AIFF’s 15-year commercial deal with Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL) expired in December 2025 with no replacement in place, the Indian Super League simply stopped. Not paused — stopped. It had been 215 days since a ball was kicked in a top-flight Indian game. The ISL finally resumed in February 2026 only after Supreme Court intervention and government assurances, in a truncated format with each club playing just 13 matches instead of the usual 24.

The AIFF’s replacement tender demanded a minimum annual guarantee of ₹37.5 crore from potential commercial partners. The market’s response was unambiguous: not a single bid was submitted. Broadcasters, corporate investors, and international entities looked at the governance structure, the reserved veto powers for the federation, and the financial exposure — and walked away.

Clubs were bleeding an estimated ₹25–30 crore each per year simply to stay operational, without revenue inflows, without scheduled matches, and without any guarantee that their investment had a future.

The emergency 2025–26 season budget was a telling number: ₹24.26 crore in total, a fraction of what previous seasons had operated on. Each participating club was asked to contribute ₹1 crore just to keep the season alive. This is a league that once aspired to be a serious Asian competition. It is now crowdfunding its own existence.

III. The Financial Rot Within

Mohammedan players have boycotted training over issues of unpaid wages

Club finances in Indian football have always been precarious — built on ownership goodwill rather than commercial sustainability. Most ISL clubs have no meaningful ticket revenue, no real retail business, and a broadcast deal that was entirely dependent on the FSDL arrangement. When that collapsed, clubs had nothing underneath.

The I-League, India’s second tier and the traditional home of clubs like Mohun Bagan (before the ISL era) and East Bengal, is in an even darker place. Operating on shoestring budgets, the 2024–25 season ended in administrative chaos: as of June 2025, two months after the last match was played, there was still no declared champion. A contractual dispute over Inter Kashi’s player registration led to point deductions, an appeal, a CAS referral, and a limbo that hung over the entire league’s credibility.

For smaller clubs operating outside the ISL, a suspended season doesn’t just mean no football. It means no income, no ability to recruit sponsors, no ability to pay coaches or support staff. The ecosystem that the ISL was supposed to lift through a rising tide has instead been left high and dry.

IV. Accountability as a Foreign Concept

The AIFF approved a USD 400,000 settlement to former national coach Igor Stimac — a contract that had been renewed on terms described internally as “unapproved and unfavorable.” An independent inquiry into that process was approved at the federation’s previous AGM. Nearly a year later, no findings have been made public.

Since 2022, the federation has seen three different general secretaries in under three years. Former administrators have described the AIFF’s culture as insular and resistant to scrutiny. The federation’s own finances are a matter of public concern: declining government grants, questions over administrative expenditure, and unspent development funds sitting idle while clubs scramble to survive.

The much-hyped Messi “GOAT India Tour” in 2025 — marketed as a turning point for football’s visibility — descended into farce, marked by security failures and political grandstanding. For players facing salary freezes and clubs staring at insolvency, it was a precise illustration of where the priorities lie.

FIFA and the AFC issued a formal warning in August 2025, threatening suspension unless the AIFF adopted a new constitution by October. The Supreme Court has been involved repeatedly — not as a welcome guardian but as a last resort when institutional failure becomes too large to ignore. India was already suspended by FIFA once, in 2022. The machinery that caused that suspension has not fundamentally changed.

V. The Fans Who Moved On Already

India is a country of enormous football interest. The Premier League has a vast, passionate Indian following. During the 2026 FIFA World Cup cycle, Indian fans will watch every game involving nations ranked well above them — neighbours, rivals, countries with far smaller populations and resources. They know the game intimately. What they don’t know, or care to follow closely, is the ISL.

The ISL was sold, in 2014, as a franchise spectacle modelled loosely on the IPL. It had celebrity co-owners, marquee foreign players, and manufactured hype. What it didn’t build was a genuine connection between clubs and their cities, or a compelling enough product to retain the attention of fans who had grown up watching Messi and Ronaldo week in, week out. A domestic league suspended for months, with no broadcast continuity and no narrative arc, cannot compete for that attention.

Viewership data and social engagement figures for the ISL lag significantly behind cricket, kabaddi, and even wrestling. The hardcore football fan in India — the one who wakes at 3am for a Champions League fixture — has simply not been given a compelling reason to invest emotionally in what happens at the Fatorda or the Salt Lake Stadium. The product on offer feels disconnected from the global game they love. And when the league disappears for months at a time, the habit of watching it disappears too.

None of this is inevitable. But for it to change, something more fundamental than a new commercial deal or a reshuffled coaching staff would have to happen — and Indian football’s recent history offers no particular reason for optimism on that front. The crisis isn’t a moment. It’s the shape of the institution