He seems hopeful yet cautious about the future of Indian football. ?If the IPL can spring up overnight with the actions and intentions of just a handful of people, why can?t football? Football just needs a framework and clarity in India. There?s plenty of room for cricket to coexist with other sports.? In New Delhi to participate in the International Football Arena’s first-ever round table in India, Ben Wells, head of marketing, Chelsea Football Club, gets candid with Sukalp Sharma on Chelsea’s plans, approach and vision for Indian football. Excerpts:

Premiership clubs, including Chelsea, have been showing a lot of interest in India. Peter Kenyon (former Chelsea CEO) also visited India couple of years ago. What is the status as of today of Chelsea?s plans of investing in Indian football and the business of Indian football?

What we realised very early on was that this is a country that we just don?t know and understand. We have deliberately not been particularly active and we are looking for two or three big corporate partners here. But we didn?t want to go down the wrong path and get into bed with the wrong people. What we are trying to do is something that we do in every market where we operate, and that is to try and understand what the wider-ranging issues are in the area of social responsibility and where we could make a long term difference. For me opening up cafes and bars I?m sure has a lot of commercial attraction here and now, but what we are more interested in is to be an active partner in the country tomorrow and the week after and beyond that. We are not here to tell India what to do, as that is definitely not our role. As a club, we have the right philosophy in terms of taking a longer-term view that needs to be taken and what are the social challenges that we can try to address through football.

Post-IPL?s success, there has been speculation that a football tournament on similar lines can work wonders for Indian football. What are your views on such a possibility?

That?s a wrong way to go about things I think. You have superstars in cricket in India but not in football. And the way football is structured around the world, it would frankly not be possible for international stars to come to India and play in a month-long tournament. And creating superstars in India, which I think we can, is going to take time. People are impatient and they want successes overnight. Look at the NBA in China, it has taken 20 years but they believed it was the right thing to do. They partnered with local federations, built state-of-the-art facilities, trained coaches and now they?ve got two Chinese players playing in the NBA. And now the NBA is entering India, they are going to be a huge success here. But it?s going to take time and so is the case with football.

Indian football fans have a dream of watching an Indian player playing in the English Premier League amongst the top clubs. Are you scouting for talent in India?

We have a massive scouting network and we are looking at all corners of the globe. I am pretty sure that our scouts are looking at India as well. Even the law of averages tells you that in a country of 1.1 billion, there are superstars somewhere. But what you have to do is to give them an infrastructure from a very early age. You need to have the advantages of good coaching form an early age, good advice on food and nutrition, etc. You need a convergence of a lot of complimentary factors. India, of course, would have kids with natural talent, but is there the environment for them to probably get to the best they can? That?s where we can probably help down the line. And if we are able to unearth that player from a country that has one-sixth of the world?s population, then we would want to be the first ones to do that.

Does Chelsea have any plans of opening up its famed football academies in India? Do you have a timeline on the academy front in India?

We have had myriad opportunities to launch academies and school programmes, which are very well intentioned, but in a country of 1.1 billion people an academy here or there in one or two cities is not going to make much difference to the whole country. That?s why we have not partnered with a football club or opened academies. We will do that down the line, but only once we know that it fits the wider strategic direction of what we want to do.

We need a local partner and once we find that partner or partners, we?ll have to figure out what needs to be done. We would like to work with the government and the federations within Indian football and try and create a plan that everyone buys into. It?s not about us coming and creating Chelsea?s agenda and, therefore, I can’t really put a date to opening up academies.

When are we going to see Chelsea touring India?

To be honest, we would love to come and play in India but if we were to come this year or next year, it would be seen as a commercial exercise. We first need to get our programmes in place in India, which need to mature, and we need to talk to a good case study. If we set up programmes here to support the tour then they?ll end up just supporting the tour. We want the tour to come here and support the programmes that are here 365 days a year, and that is a massive difference. Of course we can come to India and take big money for playing matches here, but that?s not what we are about.

You seem to be taking a steady yet slow approach, but your rival clubs might not follow the same philosophy and enter the Indian market earlier than you. Does that make you apprehensive?

We can?t control the competition and other clubs have their own agendas. We will move at the right pace for us. So we are not worried about not being the first premier league club to tour India. We want to be the guys who are number one here in the next 10-15 years on the back of the strength of the legacy of the programmes that we want to put in place for the benefit of Indian football.