FC Goa announced on Thursday night that their players and support staff have agreed to take a pay cut for the truncated Indian Super League (ISL) season.
Bengaluru FC owner Parth Jindal, on January 7, had said he hoped the players “will understand the additional financial burden on the clubs and agree to also sacrifice.”
The pay cut debate continues to rage in Indian men’s club football, even though the jury is out.
While it’s true that teams incurred losses of around ₹30 crore a year when ISL was run by the Reliance-owned Football Sports Development Limited, the erstwhile commercial partner of the All India Football Federation, their limitless spending to chase success is the main reason why they are on a cost-cutting spree now.
And the players are the first to be made scapegoats by some of the clubs. On the face of it, agreeing to a pay cut is being hailed as a selfless act, but sources told The Telegraph that the players did not like the idea.
The salary cap for the 2024-25 season was ₹18 crore, with new rules allowing clubs to exclude two players (domestic or international) from this cap, but most of the clubs exceeded it even when it was pegged at ₹16.5 crore earlier.
And now, when AIFF does not have a commercial partner, and normality is yet to return, all hell has broken loose.
Only a handful of teams like Mohun Bagan Super Giant, Emami East Bengal, Punjab FC, Jamshedpur FC and NorthEast United FC did not think of victimising the players. NorthEast United, though, released their star Moroccan striker Alaaeddine Ajaraie on loan to Indonesia’s Persija Jakarta.
Bagan and East Bengal have their own commitment to sign star players because anything less than champions is being seen as a failure by their millions of fans. “Pressure of delivering, not market, drive them,” an official said.
Bagan, who came to ISL after merging with ATK, and seven other clubs (FC Goa being one of them), who were there from the first year of ISL in 2014, did not have to pay the franchise fee of around ₹18 crore in 2024-25 to FSDL.
Late entrants like Bengaluru FC, Jamshedpur FC, and East Bengal though had to shell out the money. From the central pool, last season each, barring Mohammedan Sporting (promoted from I-League), got ₹15 crore.
“Add to that sponsorship money of ₹5-6 crore. Still, some of the clubs spent around ₹25 crore on just salaries to players. They never believed in the saying ‘cut your coat according to the cloth’. Now they are trying to rationalise. Why overspend when the Indian football market is yet to evolve?” an official asked.
“Yet, when things fall into place from next season, the same clubs will again return to the spending spree,” he predicted.