The All India Football Federation today conceded that only a couple of I-League clubs have proper sports medicine facilities and asked all the teams to seriously invest in this department.
"All I-League clubs should incorporate sports science, for prevention of injury, recovery, to prevent injury of players and help recovery of players. Sports medicine has been neglected for long by the clubs," AIFF senior vice-president Subrata Dutta said.
"Except for Bengaluru FC and may be Pune FC, all other I-League clubs do not take sports medicine seriously and do not have proper sports science facilities. This is for the sake of their better performance and for the benefit of the players," Dutta said during the launch ceremony of the fifth AFC Football Medical Conference to be held here next year.
"Take the case of Bengaluru FC, they have the best medical team which travels with the squad. They have tied up with HEAL which provides them best injury management facilities. Three physiotherapists, one conditioning coach, and a dietician always travel with them. Fewer injuries and a fit squad has been the key to their success, not big names," he said.
The launching ceremony, attended by AFC Medical Committee Chairman Dato Gurcharan Singh, SAI Director General Jiji Thomson and Organising Secretary P S M Chandran, took place almost a year before the Conference, the first-of-its-kind in India which would be held from April 2 to 4 next year here.
India would be the fourth country to host the prestigious event with Malaysia (2000 & 2011), Japan (1995) and Oman (2005) having earlier hosted it.
India has experienced some on-field incidents due to the lack of prompt medical facilities, including the unfortunate death of Cristiano Junior in the Federation Cup final match in 2004.
Even after that incident, many of the state associations of the AIFF still do not have medical committees.
