AIFF recommends of including up to four foreign players in Domestic Leagues

All India Football Federation recommends the implementation of four foreign players for all domestic league matches from the 2021 season. This comes into effect as per the current Asian Football Confederation (AFC) regulation of participation in AFC club competitions.

This new rule will be applied to the upcoming season on ISL as I-League 2021 edition. The current rules only allow 5 foreign players in each team.

However, if AFC changes the rule, the changes will be implemented in the domestic league matches which were decided by the committee under the chairmanship of Mr Shayam Thapa, via a video conference meeting.

Along with Thapa, all other members including Chairman Henry Menezes, Prasanta Banerjee, Ganapati Balguna, Pradip Kumar Datta, Ishfaq Ahmad, Sundar Raman, and Abhisekh Yadav attended this meet from their respective residences.

AIFF secretary Kushal Das was also present in the meeting.

The Committee was also informed about Under 17 Women’s World Cup which was supposed to be organized in India by the FIFA confederation working group. The date of this tournament is yet to be finalized.

It was also decided that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman would also be part of AIFF-SAI technical discussions so that they can chalk out the ways to develop Indian football effectively and efficiently.