Bengaluru, December 20: Jamshedpur FC coach Steve Coppell, a former Manchester United winger, feels Indian football can grow if the national team players get to play 30 or more competitive games in a year.
Coppell, a long-time buddy of national team coach Stephen Constantine, says a five-month Indian Super League is good but Indian players need to play continuously for about 10 months in a year.
Sharing his thoughts on bettering the standard of Indian football, Englishman Coppell said: "To go from eight to 10 teams now in the ISL, it makes it a longer league. In terms of the impact of the ISL on the national team, an extra four games per season doesn't make a big difference. You have a season from November to March, then there are a lot of months without football at the moment for the national team players. I don't know now what will fill those moments.
"To improve the Indian national team, you need your top players to play 30-plus games in a year, competitive games mind you. If that was the case, coach Stephen Constantine will be happy becasuse he knows his players are playing for a full year rather than 18-20 games in just four months."
He suggested that the organisers of the ISL look into expanding it further to keep the national team players occupied. "The next stage will be for the ISL to become bigger like the European leagues, which is the best way to go for benefiting the Indian national team and its ranking. More games in a nine-month season will be better for Indian football."
These young fans got a chance to meet their idols after training today! 😄 #JamKeKhelo #LetsFootball pic.twitter.com/lohRjpjB4h
— Jamshedpur FC (@JamshedpurFC) December 17, 2017
Supporting a long season, Coppell feels the infrastructure should be given further boost. Coppell emphasised on the needs of having more training grounds along with the stadiums that exist in India's big cities.
"I always say facilities have to improve," Coppell, whose side faces Bengaluru FC in the ISL on Thursday (December 21), said. "You need to develop your own players. In Europe, you can sign a boy when he reaches the age of six. Academies have come to india, that's good. It's a necessary step for the ISL to have fully fledged academies. They shouldn't run it for lip service (like they do now) just because the rules mandate each franchise to run a youth academy."
Coppell says India should take Iceland as a role model - the country which managed to oust his native England from the Euro 2016. "Facilities have to be massive for the quality to improve," he said. "Iceland, a country with population of 300,000, has more pitches than India. They have an awful lot of quality astro-turf pitches as well."