The All India Football Federation (AIFF) President Kalyan Chaubey, on Sunday, stressed the importance of engaging in dialogue and finding solutions to prepare and implement a “time-based roadmap” for Indian Football.

“India is a diverse country and therefore, the solutions for the betterment of football must be specific as per our needs. No cut and paste clarification is available for that. Therefore, the most important part is to engage in inclusive dialogues to identify usable solutions for our football-centric challenges,” Chaubey said.

The newly-elected AIFF president Chaubey was speaking at the three-day third edition of Global Soccer Conclave jointly organized by Sports Tech giants, Tech Mahindra, Amazon, Government of Odisha, FICCI, and sports edtech leader, Sportz Next in Mumbai.

“AIFF will facilitate the process and ultimately strategize a time-based roadmap to ensure empowerment of the football ecosystem in every state,” he added. “Youth development, quality human resources, and above all accountability can ultimately bring winning performance inside the pitch as well as outside.”

Chaubey said that the newly-elected committee has the necessary experience to take up the challenges and reach the destination.

“The challenges can be tough, but the newly-elected committee has the necessary experience to take up the challenges and reach the destination. The problems don’t have quick-fix answers. But I can promise that there will be sustainable solutions, and they will bring results. I assure you that we have already started moving towards that direction by creating various high-power committees to suggest the solutions that we are looking for,” he said.

SECRETARY-GENERAL

 All India Football Federation’s (AIFF) newly-appointed secretary general Shaji Prabhakaran has resigned from the Football Delhi president’s post to avoid “any possible conflict of interest”. 

Prabhakaran, a former Regional Development Officer for FIFA in South and Central Asia, was named AIFF secretary general on September 3, a day after former goalkeeper Kalyan Chaubey was elected as the president of the national federation.

“I have resigned from the post of Football Delhi president. Since I have been appointed as AIFF secretary general, I don’t want any possible conflict of interest,”

There is nothing in the AIFF constitution or the rules that bars him from holding the Football Delhi president’s post also but Prabhakaran said he did not want any sort of controversy or claims of conflict of interest.

“I don’t want any controversy or any conflict (of interest) claims,” said Prabhakaran who was re-elected as Football Delhi chief in March this year.

Prabhakaran is yet to take charge as AIFF secretary general and he said he will do it on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, vice president Sharafatullah was on Tuesday made the acting president of Football Delhi after a meeting of the state body.