The All India Football Federation (AIFF), the governing body of Football in India has announced a 15 year agreement with private partners IMG-RIL.

The Japanese were booed off the pitch after slumping to a 3-0 defeat to Serbia during their World Cup warm up match, played in Osaka, Japan. Serbia’s Dragan Mrdja scored two goals. The Serbs looked more up for the game as compared to their Japanese counterparts. Japan captain Yuji Nakazawa told Reuters:

The Japanese national team will begin preparations for their 2010 World Cup with a friendly against Venezuela on February 2. Venezuela haven’t qualified for the Cup, but Japan manager Takeshi Okada feels it would be a good test as “teams from South America always approach matches wanting to win”. and also added that the game “will help toughen Japan up”. Right now Japan have no more friendlies in store, however, [...]

India U-23 have managed to book a place in the SAFF finals which is to be held on Sunday, versus Maldives. The young Indian squad beat Bangladesh 1-0 on Friday, thanks to skipper Sushil Kumar Singh’s goal, scored in the 63rd minute. India started the game well and created a lot of chances, the earliest being in the second minute. The Bangladeshi’s got their act together in the second half [...]

The Indian U-23 team have qualify into the semi-finals of the SAFF Champions Cup,being played in Bangladesh. India managed to win over an in-form Nepali team. The Indian team just needed to win another match to qualify to the last four.  Whereas Nepal needed to win to stay alive in the tournament. The Indian team performance was similar to the one against Afghanistan, where they couldn’t put together decent passes, [...]

India 1-0 Afghanistan India U-23 took on Afghanistan in the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship at the BangaBandhu National Stadium, Dhaka, Bangladesh. India have won the tournament 4 times already and are favourites this time round as well, but are fielding their U-23 squad this year. India hadn’t created as many chances as Afghanistan in their opening game of this year’s tournament. Both teams ended on 0-0 at half [...]

Pohang Steelers have won the AFC Champions League, defeating Al Ittihad 2-1 in the finals held in the National Stadium in Tokyo. Al Ittihad had a string of chances in the first half but didn’t manage to take the lead. The Steelers weren’t able to match Al Ittihad in the first 45. However, after the break the South Korean Club started playing much better and took the lead through Byung-Jun’s [...]

Dempo 2-2 Mahindra United Climax Lawrence saved Dempo from a defeat by scoring in stoppage time. A 10-men Mahindra United looked set to get all three points, until the final “Climax”. Mahindra were brought down to 10 when defender D Ravanan for elbowing a Dempo player, just 33 minutes into the match. Although Dempo took the lead in the 11th minute and had many chances of extending the lead, Mahindra [...]

Subroto Paul is named the ‘Player of the Year’ by the AIFF. The Indian goal keeper has had a spectacular season, he also helped India retain the Nehru Cup by saving 3 penalties. Derrick Pereira, his Pune FC coach was delighted by the news and has tipped him to be the next captain of the Indian Football team. According to Goal.com Pereira said- “Absolutely. He can definitely captain the Indian [...]

Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty  along with her boyfriend Raj Kundra entered the All India Football Federation (AIFF), showing an interest in Indian football. The duo who own the IPL team, Rajasthan Royals, spent some time at the AIFF headquarters with general secretary Alberto Colaco. He was kept busy answering questions. Colaco said- “It was a casual meeting. Shilpa and Raj were quite enthusiastic about Indian football and wanted to know [...]