“Hero aaya, taaliyan baji, aur picture wahi ki wahi reh gayi.”
For four days, India looked like a football nation again.
Stadiums were full. Phones were up. Social media was buzzing with awe and disbelief. When Lionel Messi arrived, the country leaned forward together, starstruck, emotional, eager to be part of something rare. For once, Indian football did not have to justify its existence.
And then he left.
The cheers died down quickly. What followed was a silence Indian football knows all too well, made heavier because it came right after spectacle.
Because even as Messi departed with warmth and goodwill, the sport he represents here stayed frozen. The Indian Super League (ISL) still does not have a season.
When a Season Disappears
What makes this moment unsettling is not only the uncertainty. It is the time already gone.
We are past the middle of December 2025. The year is almost done. Not only has the league season not started yet, there is no clarity about if the competition will even happen this time around. The newly-elected officials of the All India Football Federation, which came in with lots of promises, have failed to deliver on all counts. Not only is there no league, there are no takers for a league as well.
But more on that later.
In a functioning football ecosystem, December is when the league settles into its groove. Squads are familiar, form lines up, stories begin to take shape. Instead, the ISL has quietly slipped out of the calendar altogether.
The implications of a season that refuses to begin are now hard to ignore:
- A pre-season that no longer exists
Clubs need time, not guesswork. A minimum of five to six weeks of structured preparation is essential just to get squads match-ready. With no start date in sight, even an announcement made today would push any realistic kick-off into 2026. What follows is predictable: rushed build-ups, half-fit players, and injuries waiting to happen.
- Contracts trapped in limbo
Most player and staff contracts are season-linked, built around clear timelines and defined windows. With every week lost, clubs drift closer to legal grey zones involving salaries, extensions and exits. What began as uncertainty is now quietly eroding trust.
- A reform stalled before birth
The 2025–26 season was supposed to mark a turning point, finally ushering promotion and relegation into the top tier. A delayed or compressed league threatens to reduce that long-awaited reform to a mere technicality. Structural change, after all, only works when it is built on stability.
- Continental relevance slipping away
Indian clubs already chase AFC competition at a disadvantage given the less number of slots given to the country. The lack of slots is explained by the national team’s poor FIFA ranking.
Things have only got worse after MohunBagan Super Giants were handed a ban from the competition for refusing to travel to Iran. And yes, it can get worse than that. Missing or rushing a domestic season only widens that gap.
You cannot borrow competitive rhythm when continental fixtures arrive.
- National team readiness compromised
Match sharpness cannot be manufactured in isolation. Without the edge of competitive football, form inevitably fades and rhythm slips away. And with India’s FIFA ranking now at a record-low 142, the national game is already scraping the bottom. This is hardly a moment the ecosystem can afford prolonged inactivity.
Players continue to train without clarity. Coaches are forced to plan without timelines. Fans don’t leave in protest, but through slow fatigue. Prolonged uncertainty chips away at belief far more quietly than defeat ever could.
At some point, the delay stops being a pause and starts becoming damage.
A League Without Framework
At the centre of the crisis is a legal and commercial stalemate between the All India Football Federation (AIFF) and Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL). The Master Rights Agreement that ran the league from 2014 to 2025 expired on December 8. A tender floated in September to find a new commercial partner found no bidders.
With the Supreme Court directing the AIFF to maintain the status quo and avoid new commercial agreements, the ISL has been left without a revenue framework or operational clarity.
Central revenue has stopped. Several clubs have suspended first-team operations. Players have begun speaking out. Indian football is now staring at something it has not faced in nearly three decades: the possibility of no top-flight men’s football at all.
It is at this moment that the clubs have tried to take control of their own survival.
All ISL clubs except East Bengal have written to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, proposing that the league be run by the clubs themselves as a consortium, with the AIFF holding a special share.
The proposal suggests setting up a dedicated league company to operate, manage and commercially exploit the ISL, subject to compliance with AIFF, AFC and FIFA regulations. If approved, the clubs say the 2025–26 season could begin within 45 days.
The financial details underline how strained the situation has become. No payment is proposed to the federation for the current season. From 2026–27 onwards, the clubs have offered a fixed Rs 10 crore annually, regardless of whether a commercial partner is inducted, with the AIFF carrying no commercial risk.
The clubs have acknowledged that parts of the plan would require amendments to the AIFF Constitution, changes currently before the Supreme Court. They have also asked for a joint working group involving the AIFF, the Ministry and the clubs to navigate legal and regulatory approvals, including those from AFC and FIFA.
The line is fine. Any move taken outside the AIFF framework risks FIFA scrutiny over third-party interference.
With the AIFF’s Annual General Meeting scheduled for December 20 in New Delhi, the ISL’s future, and this proposal, are set to dominate discussion.
When Players Stop Waiting
As the stalemate dragged on, players did something Indian footballers have nowadays been rather helplessly had to do a bit too many times. They spoke together.
Identical messages appeared across social media, urging that the league begin. The tone was no longer patient. It was urgent.
“Where we are right now is not a delay anymore, it’s a standstill,” wrote Sandesh Jhingan. “We have worked too hard, sacrificed too much to let our season vanish in silence.”
FIFPro Asia/Oceania followed, accusing the federation of failing to take meaningful action and of not consulting players whose livelihoods were at stake.
Senior figures also stepped in. Sunil Chhetri and Gurpreet Singh Sandhu issued public appeals for intervention, a rare and sobering sight.
The Messi Contrast
Against all of this, Lionel Messi’s visit takes on a different meaning.
The tour delivered joy, spectacle and a rare surge of genuine excitement around football.
But, it also prompted uncomfortable reflection.
Jhingan acknowledged the happiness of seeing India embrace football, but questioned the timing, noting that the celebration arrived when the domestic ecosystem was at one of its most uncertain points.
“It feels as though we are close to shutting everything down because there is no willingness to invest in football within India, yet crores were spent on this tour,”
Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra echoed that unease. While praising Messi’s journey and legacy, he admitted that parts of the visit left him unsettled.
“As a society, are we building a culture of sport, or are we simply celebrating individuals from afar?” Bindra asked.
Messi’s visit proved that India has the appetite, the audience and the emotion to celebrate football when the lights are on. What it also revealed is how fragile that support becomes once the spotlight shifts elsewhere.
The responsibility for Indian football’s crisis does not lie with Lionel Messi. Expecting a superstar’s presence to fix deep-rooted systemic issues would be unrealistic.
But when the greatest footballer of all time walks into the country during one of the sport’s bleakest domestic phases, the symbolism is impossible to ignore.
Until attention moves from momentum to doing some actual good, Indian football will continue applauding greatness from a distance while struggling to sustain its own game. So goodbye Vision 2047.
Because Messi came, Messi left.
Indian football stayed exactly where it was.
– Ends
