AIFF Roadmap Simplified: What is the planned structure for the women’s leagues in India?

The Indian federation introduced the strategy for building the road ahead for female football.

The Vision 2047 strategic roadmap charting the future course of action for Indian football, released by the All India Football Federation (AIFF). It draws out a clear structure for women’s leagues across different levels in the country. Firstly, the federation acknowledges that the incumbent top division of the national ‘senior women’ is lacking a firm structure.

Current Scenario

The Indian Women League (IWL), started in 2016 and has become more of an annual tournament with merely 11 teams participating. Furthermore, the document laments upon the missing continuity of the teams taking part in the IWL. The league made up of sides topping their respective state women’s leagues. Even the state leagues for that matter are deprived of an element of consistency. Only 11 of them hosted such competitions in the first place but with a wide disparity in terms of the count of matches played in each of these leagues.

This results in an average female footballer playing in merely 12-18 competitive matches per season. The AIFF’s vision on this front is pretty straightforward – to make the professional female footballers in the country. For them to take part in as many competitive matches as possible throughout the season.

However, this cannot be attained without enhancing the number of states who conduct their respective leagues. At present, as aforementioned, only 11 states fall in this category. There will be an increased focus on taking this figure up in the foreseeable future. The think-tank has also set a definite end date to realize these objectives. By 2026, the women league structure in the country will slate to have a four-tier structure running from the state to the national level.

Road ahead

The AIFF has also built a roadmap of what the competitions for youth women footballers in the country will look like in the future. Currently, they admit that there are negligible women's youth leagues at both the district and state levels. There is a National Women's Youth League for the U-17 level though.

The primary observation is that the central government-run Khelo India initiative is used to have multiple short leagues at the city and state levels. There is a missing consistent competition calendar and a defined pathway for players to progress and rise through the ranks. Tournaments held sporadically and that too for short engagement durations. This, like at the senior level, ends up in most of the good players playing merely 10-12 competitive matches throughout the year.

The document states that the overall ecosystem is at the domestic level, particularly for the younger lot of players. It is significantly weaker in India for women’s football despite their competitive level being higher on the international stage as compared to their male counterparts.

Defined Objective

The primary stated objective on this front is to include more age groups in the entire process. There are plans to add the U-13 and U-15 levels at a hyperlocal level to stimulate greater participation. It widens the whole talent pool of young female footballers in the country. Efforts will be undertaken on an annual basis to increase the number of teams in a city on a year-to-year basis. To increase the overall competitiveness of teams.

This will help the players play in a greater number of matches annually as well. Moreover, at the youth level professional football will begin in more states so that a proper chain, network and structure could be formed for leagues to occur at all levels.

Overall, just like across other verticals, the new roadmap has drawn out a concrete structure to give a proper framework to women’s football across different tiers and levels. However, the actual on-ground implementation of this project will determine the eventual outcome of this projected roadmap.