On the field, Indian football has had its best three weeks in a long time. From winning the Intercontinental Cup, beating Lebanon 2-0 in the final, to making the summit clash of the SAFF Championship, it has been great going for Sunil Chhetri and his team. The Igor Stimac setback notwithstanding, a victory in the final of the SAFF Cup would mean India getting a double-digit FIFA world ranking and a comparatively favourable draw in the World Cup qualifiers.
Off the field, however, the going hasn’t been smooth. While the SAFF Championships have been successful from an organisational point of view, there have been charges of financial mismanagement levelled at the current dispensation led by Kalyan Chaubey and Shaji Prabhakaran. Prabhakaran, in particular, has been in the line of fire. G Kosaraju, former President of the Andhra Pradesh Football Association, has raised questions about the 12.5-lakh monthly salary paid to Prabhakaran, saying that the compensation for the general secretary shouldn’t be more than 3 lakhs, a lot of money in India. He has even alleged that the decision to pay Prabhakaran that salary was not ratified by the AIFF Executive Committee. Finally, the decision to award the tender for the I-League to KPS Sports, a Kolkata-based company, has also come under attack, with Kosaraju arguing that the due process wasn’t followed, and the decision to grant the tender was a favour done by the current office-bearers.
With media reports suggesting that these issues could come up for discussion at the AIFF Annual Meeting on Tuesday, RevSportz reached out to Prabhakaran for his side of the story on each of these allegations. Prabhakaran, for his part, decided to take all the tough questions, and answered each in detail.
Here are the questions and answers for our readers.
Boria: There are charges against you that you are paid exorbitant sums of money as salary, and that the decision to pay you 12.5 lakhs per month wasn’t discussed with the finance committee. Apparently the members of the Executive Council were also kept in the dark. How do you respond to such allegations?
Prabhakaran: The allegation has come from someone who has no locus standi whatsoever. It is an attempt to derail the good work being done by the AIFF for the betterment of Indian football.
I will answer your question at two levels. First, at a qualitative level, and then at a more personal level.
First, it should not be about my salary. It should be about the quality of the work done. About what we are doing and what we aim to do. The past is irrelevant. Today, it is time we accept that Indian football has not been monetised or commercialised. Take cricket or even kabaddi, and you will know what I am talking about. Sports is a service industry and unless we serve a product to the consumer, in our case our fans and sponsors, which is of good quality, why would they come and watch us? Why will they invest in us? There is a glut of choice, and football will continue to lose out. So it is about the quality of work done. Can we improve the game, can we get Indian football back in the top 100 of the FIFA rankings, can we become competitive at the Asian level, can we implement Vision 2047 and stick to our aim of commercialising the sport 500 times more than what it is today? Focus should be on trying to achieve these objectives, and questions should be asked if we are doing the things we need to or not.
Now to the personal part. As a professional, I think I should get much more money than I get at the moment. Who decides my value? How do you know if I am being paid more or less? There are thousands of corporate CEOs who get far more money than I do. The BCCI CEO at one point used to get five or six times the amount of money paid to me. In India, we have made a lot of progress when it comes to human capital. But in football, we still don’t attract the best human capital because we don’t pay them well. Unless you get the best professionals, how do you market the sport and make it the best? To have the best product, you need to have the best people. This mindset of not paying will actually push Indian football back. As a professional who works 24/7 for Indian football, I expect to be compensated for my services, and have a certain standard set in my eyes. Why should I settle for anything less?
Second, do I cut my own pay cheque? Do I get paid in cash? Does it not have the approval of the finance committee? Was it done underhand and under the table?
I can tell you very clearly that each of these things are statements from disgruntled elements who are jealous of what we are doing, and don’t want the improvement of Indian football going forward.
Boria: What about the issue of awarding the tender to a Kolkata-based company without doing proper due diligence and without following due process?
Prabhakaran: Yet again, it is a completely baseless allegation. We had organised a zoom call with all the bidders, and in the call, our committee members were also present. Everything was discussed in detail, and then the tender was awarded to the lowest bidder. I am not making any of this up. The meeting was recorded, and the recording is very much available if you want to see it.
See, in today’s age, you can televise a game with a mobile device as well. With the quality of mobile phones available, such a telecast is also a possibility. You can do that for a few thousand rupees. And then you can also get telecast done spending a few million rupees. It is about the kind of product you want. About the kind of technology you want to use. About the kind of product you want to dish out to your consumers. If you are satisfied with dishing out a substandard product, you can appoint anyone and everyone. And that’s what was done with Indian football in the past. Frankly, today also we aren’t as good as cricket or even kabaddi. We need to get there. See the coverage of the ISL. That’s the standard we need to aspire to for the I-league and for our women’s game. If we have to make our product the best, we have to invest in making it the best. Why do you watch the FIFA World Cup or the FIFA Women’s World Cup? If the coverage was shoddy, would you do so? To produce something of quality, we have to be ready to make the investments that will produce the quality of broadcast we want.
I am saying the same thing again to you. These are attempts to create roadblocks in our efforts to improve the game in India. We are trying to do things in a professional way, and these are attempts to stop us from doing so. Having said that, our job as professionals is to serve the sport we are in and that’s what we will do going forward.