Srinagar: India’s football governing body, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has announced the list of the academy accredition for the Phase 1 results of 2024-25 with J&K Sports Council Football Academy demoted to 1 Star rating.
As per AIFF, the academies were evaluated on key criteria, these ratings recognize academies that meet AIFF’s standards for youth development.
This accreditation highlights the academies excelling in nurturing future football talent across India, the AIFF result letter to Football Units read.
While Bengaluru FC have earned 5 Stars, the J&K Sports Council Academy earned only 1 Star and stand at 61st spot in the list of academies.
Total of 81 academies in India have qualified the first phase results. Only Bengaluru FC and Reliance Foundation have got 5 Stars while as 3 academies got 4 Stars. 17 academies have earned 3 Stars while as 25 academies have got 2 Stars. Rest of the academies including Sports Council Academy have got only 1 Star.
It is demotion for the J&K Government Run Football Academy that involves some well known footballers turned coaches of Indian football. Launched in 2016 under the flagship idea from then secretary Sports Council Waheed ur Rehman Parra, the academy over the years has gone backwards owing to mismanagment and lack of work ethics from the persons who are at the helm.
Even after Waheed ur Rehman’s departure, the Government kept supporting academy fully and provided all the facilities to it. However, the lack of interest from the coaches and the persons at the helm has ruined a dream project that had every potential to turn into the feeding nursery for J&K Football.
Only couple of months ago, Sports Council had issued that its Football Academy was granted top Rating or an award by AIFF, only to retract its statements later after finding that the persons at the helm had misled Sports Council and Government by boosting false claims. The incident had recieved major attention in the media and Sports Council had to retract all its statements due to being misled by the concerned Academy officials.
Despite such an incident and falling standards of the academy, Sports Council has kept same officials at the helm and have been facilitating the individuals at various circles and positions.
While Sports Council Football Academy in entire J&K is the only football academy that has got its own state of the art football fields, dedicated football coaches, staff and proper funding, support from the Council and its higher ups, the Standards and results have gone down.
The reasons for this major fall can be attributed to the non-interest from the concerned who operate academy. They have prioritised their other engagements over running the football academy and then one cant expect the things to run smoothly and achieve results that are required.
The only thing to be needed now is to resurrect the academy standards by getting rid of the people at the helm, particularlythe ones who are on the deputation from the other departments. The other major thing that can be done is to engage young coaches as top coaches remain busy due to their personal engagements.
If things are not made right this time, then we may see this dream project getting shut down like many we have seen over the years.