Can fading stars alone prop up PLS?: Talkingpoint

One good thing about the Premier League Soccer (PLS), Indian football's next big thing, is that several of my colleagues — quite a lot of them from the UK — keep asking me what the fuss is all about. To them, India is more about the Tendulkars and Dravids, while the name of one Baichung Bhutia rang a faraway bell because of his Bury FC days.

However, if a provincial league (it is launched by the Indian Football Association (IFA), governing body of the game in the state of West Bengal) can cook up a brew which already boasts of a net worth of $3.7 billion (Dh13.59 billion) and talk of matching up to what the IPL is to cricket today — then it definitely is worth raising a storm in the teacup.

Coming from the state myself, one can vouch for the fact that the concept of the six franchises — based on loyalties of the respective football-loving districts — is spot-on and gate sales will not be a problem when the likes of a Siliguri (with Fabio Cannavaro as its icon player) takes on Barasat, which boasts the highest paid star in the auction in Hernan Crespo. It will certainly be a big departure from the concept of the three big clubs, based on ethnicity and religion, which have ruled the hearts of football fans in that state for more than a century.

While lauding this ambitious venture of IFA and the Celebrity Management Group (CMG), their marketing company, one cannot help but raise certain pertinent questions. Unlike an IPL, where the icon players have been supported by an assembly of current, in-form internationals and Indian talent, the PLS seems rather too heavily reliant on an elite group of fading stars to give them the initial push. While there is no doubting the class of a Cannavaro, Crespo or former England star Robbie Fowler, there could always be that question mark if their agents have pushed the envelope too far in hard-selling players with questionable fitness and form.

Inspirational defender

Let's take Cannavaro, Italy's World Cup-winning captain in 2006, as a case in point. It's been less than year since he retired from all forms of competitive football with a dodgy knee here in Dubai, with Al Ahli proclaiming him as one of their ‘brand ambassadors'. Pushing 40 now, it's hence difficult to see the once inspirational defender giving it his all, when it's his past reputation alone which has influenced the franchise owners to fork out a tidy sum of $830,000 per year.

If the PLS is to succeed, it's imperative that it gets off to a flying start in the first season itself. The think tank of the league assures that a revenue model is very much in place and the franchise owners should be able to make profits from the second year itself, but one has to keep one's fingers crossed.

Don't get me wrong on this, but from all accounts the franchise owners in the PLS are more of a group of medium scale industrialists with big dreams and not men with deep pockets who are the backers of the IPL.

Let's see how it all kicks off in the first week of March.