On October 30, 1998 Arunava Chaudhuri, IndianFootball.Com Editor-in-Chief (India's Premier Football Site), founded the Indian Football Internet Fan Club. This fan club was planed as an information and discussion forum on the Internet. In the course of the time the ambitions of the members changed and they wanted to become active in the improvement and development of Indian football. For this reason the members from the Indian Football Internet Fan Club decided to create an organisation, which should operate world-wide. On August 15, 1999 (INDIA's "Independence Day"), the Indian Football Internet Fan Club was rechristened to be named the Indian Football Supporters Club (IFSC).
The official establishment was carried out on January 26, 2001 in the context of a solemn act in the "India club" in London, England. The special attention of the IFSC is on the world-wide development and promotion of Indian football. Training, coaching, women's football, youth promotion, transfers, merchandising, sponsoring and media are in the centre of attention.
The Indian Football Supporters Club - International was officially registered as a Non-Governmental organisation with charity status on January 1, 2002 in Shillong, Meghalaya in the Northeast of India. The IFSC owe this to the IFSC member Prodyut Deb Barman, the prince of Tripura.
In the meantime several regional branches have been founded from the head federation Indian Football Supporters Club - International:
Further regional branches are planned in Bangalore, Chennai, other parts of India, England, UAE and North America.
Currently the Indian Football Supporters Club International has got approx. 350 members. These members are from India, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, the United Arab Emirates and the USA.
The Indian Football Supporters Club became first publicly active in July 2000. The members helped to organise and realise a conference on Indian football at the University of Northampton (England). At this conference many experts like officials, fans, media, politicians and also industrials were represented. The most prominent guest was the then FIFA "Director of Communications" Keith Cooper, who gave the inaugural speech and wanted to get himself informed about Indian football. Apart from the conference there was also the first "IFSC-Convention", where many England-based members met and discussed the goals of the IFSCs.
The first large project which the IFSC plans are two football academies in Calcutta and Calicut. Young talents will be trained there under the supervision of professional coaches in the art of modern football. This ambitious project is to be put into practice by the assistance of the members and by numerous sponsors. Besides that the project will receive assistance from foreign professionals - e.g., Jozef Achtergael, a Belgian coach.
The IFSC - Germany branch organised a football tournament in August 2002 in favour of the academy project. The "International Indian Football Series 2002" (IIFS2002) was a tournament for under-17 year old. The Indian U17 national team (quarterfinalist of the AFC U17 Championship 2002), won the IIFS2002 trophy. Further information's on the tournament are available under iifs.indianfootball.com. |