Why did Indian football reject Baichung Bhutia for it’s top job?

It was nothing short of a coup at the All India Football Federation (AIFF) on Friday afternoon when Kalyan Chaubey, a former national team goalkeeper, routed the iconic Baichung Bhutia by 33-1 votes to be the first international footballer to take over the president’s chair. Chaubey, an active leader of the BJP, had been in pole position as his candidature enjoyed the backing of the Union government – but his margin of victory has certainly left all surprised.

It’s almost an irony that on a day when Indian football was celebrating the occasion of a first-ever international taking up the top job after a turbulent few months – it had to be at the expense of arguably country’s biggest ambassador of the game in the new millennium.

So, where did Bhutia get his gameplan wrong, despite being involved with Indian football for nearly 30 years – from being a talismanic footballer, club owner, administrator and an aspirant politician (he had lost the elections twice as a Trinamool Congress candidate and now has his own party, Hamro Sikkim) ? Well, virtually on all counts.

There is no gainsaying about the political overtones to the election as Chaubey, who had manned the bars for both the Kolkata giants East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, had won half the battle when he was nominated by the Gujarat Football Association. One believes that there was an unwritten diktat on the state bodies to vote for Chaubey while one of the candidates from Bhutia’s camp alleged after a results that a senior Union minister actually visited the hotel of state officials, exhorting them to vote against the former India captain.

Now, this is not exactly a surprise in the context of elections of top sporting bodies in India, but Chaubey had certainly done his homework better than Bhutia. The former had taken on the establishment and been at the forefront of a no-confidence motion moved by the state bodies for nearly one-and-a-half years – seeking an election at the AIFF as the last incumbent Praful Patel had been overstaying his tenure by a long chalk.

Bhutia, the former Indian captain and the first footballer to wear over 100 international caps for the country, decided to take the plunge at the eleventh hour on the premise that the executive committee will have a representation of equal number of footballers. A number of insiders to the election process felt that Bhutia’s assessment was that he would sail through on reputation alone as he refused to go through the hard grind of sitting with the state association bosses and work on the numbers game.

This apparently peeved the state associations – so much so that he failed to secure his nomination from home state Sikkim and had to rely on Andhra Pradesh body to complete the formalities. It was equally surprising to see the lack of enthusiasm about Bhutia from Indian Football Federation (IFA), the Bengal body, where Bhutia’s legend actually started as a 17-year-old for East Bengal.

Elections, let’s face it, are essentially a numbers game where marshalling of the panel plays a key role. Bhutia, however, failed to get the plot here as well as instead of trying to rally his troops – he apparently focused on projecting himself as the ideal candidate for the presidency.

A senior official from the southern part of the country observed that the damning verdict at the elections was not as much against Bhutia – but against the fact that he was seen a candidate of the ruling clique of Patel and erstwhile secretary Kushal Das – men who were responsible for bringing the reputation of AIFF to it’s knees and finally incur a Fifa ban.

The state associations had been receiving feelers from Patel-Das camp to vote for Bhutia. The latter, many feel, was currying out a favour to the outgoing regime as he had for long enjoyed a decent salary from the AIFF to be on their technical panel. However, the damage had been done to the country’s reputation with the ban and merely Bhutia’s candidature for the hot seat was not enough to see him through.

The state associations had been receiving feelers from Patel-Das camp to vote for Bhutia. The latter, many feel, was currying out a favour to the outgoing regime as he had for long enjoyed a decent salary from the AIFF to be on their technical panel. However, the damage had been done to the country’s reputation with the ban and merely Bhutia’s candidature for the hot seat was not enough to see him through.

It seems that over the years, Bhutia had acquired a reputation of being a fence-sitter and aligning himself subtly with power. He had also ridden on ‘Brand Bhutia’ to launch more than a dozen signature football academies across the country, but has been hardly seen as the hands-on mentor.

Moving on, Bhutia had been a sport to agree to be in the six-member elite panel of footballers in the AIFF executive committee, along with the likes of veteran Shabbir Ali and I.M.Vijayan. The onus will be on Chaubey and his committee to pick their brains well for the benefit of Indian football!