by Rahul Dutta
2/3/11
Professionalism is an important criterion to maintain the standard in football. For a football club, it is a mandatory subject of concern to be professional. This 21st century is so advanced that without professionalism it has become hard to maintain a class in the world football.
We all are familiar with the football culture of European countries. Clubs from the Europe maintain a standard due to their professionalism. As a result, football leagues of those countries became most popular across the world. Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Ajax, FC Porto, Celtic are the few teams who are maintaining their standard year after year.
Not only the powerhouses, but the small clubs belonging to the lower levels of various European country leagues are also trying to maintain professionalism. In Europe, professionalism is a mandatory criterion for the clubs to get license from the UEFA.
After realizing the impact of professionalism on world football, the clubs from the AFC region are also trying to implement professionalism in their football structure. The clubs participating in the J-league (Japan), K-league (South Korea), Jia League (China), A-league (Australia) already have become professional. Moreover, AFC is also taking it seriously as it is trying to make all the AFC affiliated football leagues professional in upcoming years.
In India, it came to light that the professional I-League will be kicked off from the very next year. For those reasons AFC already took various measures in Indian football. All the clubs of I-league are given time to become professional before the start of next season. But most of the clubs are lagging behind in the schedule time line in this respect.
Today East Bengal will take on Chonburi FC from Thailand in their first round robin league match from Group H of the AFC Cup football championship.
Though Chonburi FC is much younger club with respect to East Bengal, but then also it runs in a complete professional system. Chonburi FC has its own stadium with all the modern facilities with an accommodation of 10000 fans. Chonburi Municipal Stadium has the floodlight system with a space for car parking just outside the stadium. They have their own ticketing system. Chonburi FC souvenir and merchandise shops are well designed and maintained professionally. They have their own football mascot. Moreover Chonburi FC has a great youth system as they have their own football academy.
Supporters of Chonburi FC also trying to help their club in this respect. They watch all their games by wearing the official team jerseys. They sing songs together to cheer up their team. More over there are quite a large number of female supporters who come to the stadium to support Chonburi FC.
As Thai Premier League (TPL) is a professional league, and maintained by the Football Association of Thailand (FAT) superbly, so they have a huge advantage to fulfill all the necessary criterion for becoming a professional club. Though Thailand is ranked 120 in the latest FIFA ranking, but they get a huge support from their country based corporate sectors to develop their football structure.
If we compare it with East Bengal we will definitely understand that where exactly are we lagging. Though we have a rich football culture and a football history of almost 91 years,then also we are unable to do things which Chonburi FC achieved in just 14 years.
As cricket is the main sport in India, so we have problem of sponsors in the field of football. So,we don't have that kind of infrastructure due to the shortage of monitory support.
Though it is depends upon the club administrations, but it's also the duty of the AIFF to be more professional like FAT to change the Indian club football system.
Let's see when our dreams will be fulfilled.
P.S: All the East Bengal fans who will be coming to the stadium to cheer our team are requested not to bring any kind of fire crackers or inflammable materials.
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