Aizawl Football Club becomes the first team from the North East to clinch the I-League football championship title. The game known as the North East Derby saw Aizawl FC pitted against Shillong Lajong FC. Aizawl coach, the 40 year old Khalid Jamil a Kuwaiti national has played for the India national football team since 1997 and had earlier coached the Mumbai Football Club. Jamil was seen bending and kissing the JN Stadium ground immediately after the fairy tale finish on Sunday when Aizawl FC scored its critical goal against Lajong to position as itself as the unrivalled champion of the I-League Football 2017. Compared to most other football clubs Aizawl has the lowest investment of just Rs 1.5 crore which is only one-twentieth of what most clubs spend on their footballers. Incidentally, Mizoram also has the highest number of footballers playing for different football clubs of the country but it was only in the last two year that the Aizawl FC has come up. So much so that when Aizawl scored a 1-0 win against Mohun Bagan on April 22 this year, a leading English news daily captioned its story as, “Team from nowhere defeats Mohun Bagan.” Henceforth, the rest of the country would be better placed to know that Aizawl is the capital of the North Eastern State of Mizoram.
The Sunday win was the 9th out of 10 matches that Aizawl FC played. The Club had accumulated 36 points from 17 matches while its closest rival Mohun Bagan had 33 points from as many games. Aizawl could have won the title even if it lost the Sunday match but that would have depended on Mohun Bagan losing to Chennai City FC the same day which they did. Aizawl’s Sunday win has firmly established it as one of India’s leading I-league football club and the first from the North East. So while Shillong Lajong has been the first football club from the North East to join the prestigious I-League, Aizawl FC has beaten it to the glorious title of I-League champion. Perhaps this has much to do with the patronage that football receives from the State Government of Mizoram which has been actively promoting football as a game and not just football clubs. Other states have much to learn from the Aizawl win.