AIFF Awards 2017: Chhetri wins his 5th AIFF Player of the year award, Thapa wins emerging player award

by Chittu Shetty July 22, 2018

AIFF’s Executive Committee Meeting was held in Mumbai on Sunday (July 22, 2018) were apart from various executive decisions AIFF awards recipients were announced too .

Besides, AIFF General Secretary Mr. Kushal Das; Vice Presidents Mr. Subrata Dutta, Mr. Larsing Ming,Mr. KMI Mather, Mr. Manavendra Singh, Treasurer Mr. ZA Thakur, all other members except Mr. AR Khaleel, Mr. Sanjay Behera, Mr. Deepak Kumar, Mr. Lalnghinglova Hmar and Ms. Sara Pilot, attended the meeting.

Mr. Chirag Tanna, representing FSDL attended the meeting as an invitee along with FIFA RDO Mr. Prince Rufus. The Committee strongly condemned Indian Olympic Association’s decision to debar Football teams from participating in the forthcoming Asian Games scheduled to be held in Jakarta.

The Committee also unanimously ratified the 2018-19 Club licensing regulations. Meanwhile, in a further effort to curb age-fraud, the TW3 test, which has been accepted by the Supreme Court as an age verification test as well used extensively used by the BCCI, has been implemented by the Committee for all age-group competitions including Club competitions, state tournaments and even National Team competitions. The costs for the tests would be borne by the respective Clubs and State Associations.

Abiding by FIFA regulations, the Committee ratified the use of 5 substitutions in age-group competitions along with an extra substitute if the match is stretched to extra-time.

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The Committee also recommended that a standard draft agreement be circulated to the Clubs which will include all clauses which need to be included as per FIFA regulations. However, Clubs would be allowed to use certain variable clauses as an annexure. This will be implemented from the 2019-20 season. Ms. Roma Khanna apprised the Committee about the updates on AIFF’s Centre of Excellence presently coming up in Kolkata while Mr. Prince Rufus apprised the Committee about the FIFA Forward programme.

Based on AIFF two-member Committee’s (Mr. Subrata Dutta and Col. BMR Mehta) visit to Football Association, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the Committee decided to grant provisional affiliation to Dadra and Nagra Naveli which would later be approved by AIFF’s General Body in the AGM meeting later.

Meanwhile, Sunil Chhetri was declared the 2017 AIFF Player of the Year while Kamala Devi bagged was adjudged the 2017 AIFF Woman Player of the Year. Anirudh Thapa and E Panthoi were adjudged the 2017 Emerging Player and the 2017 Woman Emerging Player of the Year respectively.

The full list of the 2017 Awards are as follows:

2017 AIFF Award for Best Grassroots Development Programme: Kerala FA.

2017 AIFF Award for long-time contribution to Indian Football: Hero Motocorp.

2017 AIFF Award for Best Assistant Referee: Mr. Sumanta Datta (Assam).

2017 AIFF Award for Best Referee: Mr. CR Srikrishna.

2017 AIFF Emerging Woman Footballer of the Year: Ms. E Panthoi.

2017 AIFF Emerging Player of the Year: Mr. Anirudh Thapa.

2017 AIFF Woman Footballer of the Year: Ms. Kamala Devi.

2017 AIFF Player of the Year: Mr. Sunil Chhetri.

Also read our Feature Article of the week: The curious case of NorthEast United FC

Also Read: Cesar Ferrando appointed Head Coach of Jamshedpur FC

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