At a juncture when the Indian Super League seems to be in the midst of an existential crisis, the feeling of doom and gloom about football in India may be all-pervasive. But in these bleak times, it is the exuberance of youth that one must lean towards for hope.

In this regard, Punjab FC has been making strides at the grassroots level, with its youth teams winning the premier tournaments that fall under the aegis of the All India Football Federation over the past two seasons.

The northern club, which has its academy in Mohali, has won the AIFF Elite Youth League two seasons in a row, and has emulated the same feat in the AIFF Junior League too. In addition, a few players from Punjab’s academy were recently picked in the Indian team for the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) U-20 Championship. Defender Pramveer Singh was even called up by head coach Khalid Jamil to the senior India set-up last year.

The man orchestrating Punjab’s success in the junior age-groups is Italian Giuseppe Cristaldi, whose official designation is Technical Director, Youth Programme. Having worked on youth development at clubs like Inter Milan and Empoli, the 39-year-old has brought his knowhow to Punjab since the start of the 2024-25 season. In an interview with The Hindu, Cristaldi offered his views on the progress of Punjab’s academy, the different facets of youth development, and the structural issues that the game faces at the grassroots level in this country. Excerpts:

Punjab has won the AIFF Elite Youth League and the Junior League two years in a row. How do you reflect on the job done at the youth level so far?

First of all, I have to say that winning is always nice. This is a very important aspect. At the same time, at the youth level, it’s not the most important thing. At our level, the priority is the players’ development. It is about how they develop in order to play professional football at club level and hopefully for the senior national team.

So this has to be the priority, not only for Punjab FC but for every academy in India.

Having said that, nobody plays to lose. Whoever says winning is not important, even at the youth level, is lying. The titles are something that we are very proud of. It reinforces the good job that the club is doing at the youth level.

Beyond the titles, how do you measure whether the club is on the right track in terms of youth development?

Analysing the performances of the teams is very important for us. Another important thing in youth football is the involvement of all the players in the different competitions. In the Junior League that we just won, and even in the Elite Youth League, you will never find the same line-up from one match to another.

We need to understand how many players can contribute to the team in a competition. We usually give a chance to all the players who are part of the squad.

In the semifinal of the Junior League against Bengaluru FC, for example, we played two players who had played zero minutes in the competition until that moment.

Maybe the game will not go well, but this is a risk that we have to take as a youth setup. And then, of course, we have to make an evaluation based on the performances. But if we don’t give opportunities to the players, how can we know if they are going to be good or not for the future? So this is something that for us is very, very important. I don’t want a player at the end of the season to have played only a few minutes. It will not allow us to make a realistic and concrete evaluation of the future potential of the player.

What is the key to youngsters developing in the right way?

One of the main problems of Indian football is at the grassroots level. Players have to start when they are very young – when they are seven, eight or nine years old. Those are the golden years. After you pass that age, to learn certain basic movements, coordination, agility and balance, which then influence the technical aspects, become a little bit more complicated.

In the ISL, we see certain players have a bad first touch. Because those are all things that they should have learnt when they were young. If we are talking about a player who is now 26 or 27, it is likely that the work done was not correct 15 or 16 years ago.

There are many factors that can influence this. So something that we should start doing in India is to start working in a better way at the grassroots level.

When players are in their formative years, it is important that things like agility, balance and technical ability are worked on. You can start to work on tactics with players at a later stage.

It’s often felt in India that there is a need to train the coaches before training the players. How have you gone about conveying your ideas to the coaches at the academy?

I have to say that I have been very lucky to have found a group of coaches who are very professional and knowledgeable. So, it has been very easy for me to bring in my ideas and share them with the coaches. I don’t want to call it philosophy because it is a word that I don’t like to use. Philosophy is something that we can leave to other areas. Football is a sport. It’s fun, it’s engaging.

We have at least one coaching meeting per week. I follow the training sessions of all the coaches. We are constantly sharing ideas and information. The value of Indian coaches sometimes is underestimated. There are some good-quality coaches. They just need to be given certain tips to go in the right direction.

How are the kids selected in the academy?

There are certain rules of the AIFF that we need to follow. A certain number of players have to come from the state of origin of the club. We want to keep a Punjabi identity as well. I am happy to say that the Player-of-the-Tournament in the Junior League was Jasmeet Singh from Punjab. But we also have players from Kerala, Kolkata, North-East. We often organise trials all over the country. As we speak, we are having trials in 12 different States.

Our recruitment comes from scouting during competitions as well. We see certain players in other teams that we believe can be part of our academy. So, obviously, in discussion with their clubs, we see if there is the possibility of those players joining us.

When Punjab won the Dream Sports Championship last year, Norwich City was one of the teams. Minerva’s youth side was in the news for beating Liverpool in April. How valuable is the exposure that Indian teams get from travelling to Europe or playing against clubs from there?

Well, I believe that the exposure abroad is very good for Indian kids just for the experience firstly. It’s a life experience, which is very important.

But at the same time, we have to understand what kind of competitions we are going to play in. It is useless to put a team in a competition where the level is not challenging or not right. Just winning trophies doesn’t serve the purpose.

If we play an under-15 or under-16 tournament that is seven-a-side or nine-a-side, it is not useful. It is fine for younger age categories. So, the format of the competition and opponents we play against are very important for us to decide whether we should participate in a competition.

Quite a few players from the academy were part of the Indian team for the SAFF U-20 Championship in March and April. How satisfying was that?

It’s a great reward. Ultimately, all the players want to represent the national team. We had seven players called up to the India U-20 side for the SAFF Championship. There was one who got injured and could not participate in the competition. Almost 30% of the side was from our academy. It is encouraging for the future because it means we are working in the right direction as an academy. It is not just a credit to the recruitment. It also shows that the players are growing under our system in the correct way. We want to see more of this in all the age categories of the national team and hopefully in the senior national team as well.

The ISL seems to be staring at an uncertain future. Should kids from Indian academies aspire for more than just playing in the ISL?

A few years back, I felt India had taken a big step forward. As a football fan, I was admiring what India was trying to do with the ISL. There were players like Lucio, Alessandro Nesta, Marco Materazzi, Roberto Carlos, Robert Pires and Alessandro Del Piero involved. These were world-class players.

The ISL has deteriorated. We know about the problems of the league. For our players in the academy, the ISL is a realistic target. But I tell the kids in my meetings that they should target reaching a level where they are good enough for top leagues in Asia and even maybe leagues in Europe. They should have the ambition to reach a high level in their professional career.

With such a big population, it is always statistically possible for someone from India to break through to the top leagues in Asia or even somewhere in Europe. That has to be the big target for the Indian ecosystem. We need to create opportunities for players to dream about playing abroad. How much time it takes to reach that depends on many things. But this has to be the aim. This is how the Indian national team will benefit. If someone makes that jump and brings back knowledge that they can share with others, the level of everyone in the Indian system will go up.

What are the things impeding youngsters in India?

One of the things is football culture. In India, youngsters idolise cricketers mostly. In countries like Italy, England, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, you are bombarded with football from the time you are born.

Everyone has two legs, two arms, one head and one brain. So, everyone is exactly the same from the physical point of view. But the football culture counts for sure. In Europe, kids play on the streets and study football closely. When I was eight or nine years old, I knew the intricacies of the different tactical formations at Inter Milan, which was my favourite club. We knew these kind of things from a young age. This is obviously a big advantage. So, there is a big gap from the cultural point of view.

I don’t believe there are issues at a physical level. When we say India, it’s a very broad category. Even in India, we all know that a player from the North-East is completely different to a player from Punjab or Goa or Kerala. India is a pot of everything. So, the country has everything from a physical perspective.

What are the major challenges at the grassroots level?

Infrastructure is a problem. Many clubs don’t have proper facilities where the kids can develop properly. If a football ground isn’t good, the ball will not bounce properly. To develop the technical part will be more difficult for players in these circumstances.

The professional level of the coaches, especially those working at the grassroots level, is another problem. Many of the coaches work part-time. It affects the quality of the sessions, and the effort that they exert cannot be up to standard simply because they don’t have time and have to feed the family. This will then reflect in the knowledge received by the players.

When you see an ISL game, what is more glaring — the lack of technical ability or tactical awareness?

From the tactical point of view, the ISL is behind, especially in certain phases of the game.

Technically, there are good-quality players around. But they have missed out on the opportunity to be better because they have not worked on the basics that are needed in their foundational phase. They are not able to perform in the way that they potentially could. This leads to mistakes that we see often in ISL, which you don’t expect in a professional top-tier league.

The quality of the overseas players is not at the same level as it was a few years ago. When the likes of Del Piero and Pires were involved in the past, the Indian players were learning by just training with them. That was a big learning experience. With that not being the case anymore, it reflects in the level of the league.