AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: As the President of the Sikkim Football Association Mr. Menla Ethenpa is involved with the game’s administration for a number of years. An Executive Committee member of the All India Football Federation, Mr. Ethenpa is the chairman of the recently constituted Finance Committee of the Federation.

A few days ago, the Finance Committee met to have a look at the finance of the AIFF and give it a shape that will not only streamline the expenses but will also give the development of football the right direction. Once the meeting was over, Mr. Ethenpa and Mr. Maloji Raje Chhatrapati, the deputy chairman of the Finance Committee, spoke about the way they want the things to move.

While making it clear that a restrain on expenditure is the need of the hour, the Finance Committee chairman said, in his view, the best place to invest is Youth Development because nothing else brings a better return in the end. “Everything revolves around the finance. As you all know we have been trying our level best to curtail the expenses. We are doing it because we believe that money should be reinvested in the various age group tournaments in the coming days,” said Mr. Ethenpa.

“We have been realising for quite some time that number of competitions has to increase to give the players the maximum exposure. Then only we will know the quality of the game, and the skill of the players. The finances should be made where the players will get maximum exposure,” he added.

Mr. Ethenpa said the effort to put the money in the basket of Youth Development is a long-time investment that would not bring results overnight. “We know it is going to take time. But at least we will know that we have now started investing on the right path,” he said with confidence.

Mr. Maloji Raje too was forthright in his observations and the way forward. “As the Chairman said, we need to look at the expenditure critically, where we can curtail lots of expenses and logistics or maybe on any other heads, which is not always necessary. So, if we can try and make some savings there, we can invest that money on competitions. It will be our main aim for the development of the game,” he said.

“In the current AIFF Executive Committee, everybody has emphasised on giving importance to grassroots. We must introduce new programme for the grassroots because that is where we should concentrate for the future development of football. That is the aim of the new committee and we are definitely looking at it seriously. Grassroots will occupy the centre stage in near future,” said Maloji Raje.