Football: Proposed Indian league fails to take off due to logistics problems

KOLKATA, India (AP) - A proposed Indian professional football league that was to feature the likes of former Argentina striker Hernan Crespo and Italy's World Cup-winning captain Fabio Cannavaro, has been scrapped owing to logistic problems.

The five-team tournament planned on the lines of the successful franchise-based Indian Premier League cricket tournament was announced with much fanfare by the Indian Football Association but things failed to move after a players' auction in January last year.

The IFA secretary-general Utpal Ganguly says the main reasons for not pursuing the project further are "logistics like the unavailability of stadia and the backing out of some of the franchises for commercial reasons".

The league was originally planned for February-March last year before being postponed indefinitely.