Indian football fans, both of the Indian Super League (ISL) and the English Premier League were drooling when the news broke that Atletico de Kolkata had offered Didier Drogba $1 million for this year’s season.
And why ever not? This was THE Didier Drogba, legendary striker for Chelsea FC, who has been the latter’s fourth all-time top scorer. Talk about striking it big, Indian fans must have thought.
No doubt if Drogba, 37, had actually accepted the offer, his signing would have been Indian football’s coup of the century.
But that was not to be. Reports soon poured in that the Chelsea legend was going to continue playing in Chicago Fire Soccer Club in the Major Soccer League (MLS) in the US, and that was that.
However, the million dollar question is – will getting ‘has been’ stars like Drogba benefit Indian football in any way? Or can this simply be written off as an overpriced marketing gimmick to sell tickets and lure sponsors to the ISL?
Dash to Recruit ‘Has Beens’
Drogba isn’t the first ‘has been’ to excite ISL team owners. In fact, the tournament has been targetting many retired international stars. Former Brazilian star defender, Roberto Carlos, 42, who had last played professional football in 2012 has been signed by Delhi Dynamos as their marquee player-cum-manager for the 2015 season.
His former Brazilian teammate, Ronaldo even wished him luck through this video.
Similarly, other than making a million dollar offer to Drogba, Atletico de Kolkata has also recruited Portugal’s former striker Helder Postiga as their marquee player.
In fact, even in their maiden season last year, ISL clubs recruited various ‘has beens’ like Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires and Fredrik Ljungberg, Luis Garcia, Nicolas Anelka, David James.
Can Their Presence Benefit Indian Football?
The acquiring of these players can definitely help sell tickets, not to mention attract sponsors with the big bucks. After all, a chance to see the likes of Roberto Carlos and Drogba play live – whom up until now, most starry-eyed Indian fans have only watched on TV – on a ticket that costs less than Rs 500 is an offer few fans will let up on.
But the question of their benefiting the wider spectrum of Indian football still remains to be answered.
The quality of domestic football leagues like the i-League certainly doesn’t seem to have improved much in the past one year – since the inception of the ISL.
But having a Del Piero or a Carlos in the dressing room to serve as a marquee player-cum-manager could help nurture a whole crop of young budding talent. This is additional to the fact that playing alongside such great names would be quite a learning experience for Indian footballers.
However, the problem is that most of these marquee players have not really been spending too much of their time on the field. Their attention has rather been diverted to marketing campaigns and the inaugurating of events for the clubs they’ve been signed on for.
1 Win in 4 Matches For India
Even the national football team has performed poorly since the conclusion of the ISL in December last year. The team has played four matches and won only one against Nepal.
In fact, the Indian team lost quite shamefully to Guam, a team ranked more than 30 places below them. It was deplorable. Mind you, most of the Indian players had shared pitch time and dressing room time with the foreign ‘has beens’.
Whether this season will bring new hope for domestic football in India, only time will tell.
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