It has been a long road for Shillong Lajong, a club born more than 4 decades ago, but in some ways the journey is just beginning. Who better to tell us about Lajong’s plans for the future than Habamutlang Lyngdoh, who has been with the club for over a decade and who is now its COO
The recent discussion surrounding football academies and youth development in Meghalaya provides an important opportunity to reflect on where football in our state has come from, where it stands today, and where we believe it must go in the future.
For Shillong Lajong, youth development has never been a short-term exercise. It has been central to the very reason the club exists.
Lajong was founded in 1983 by PD Sawyan and late Kitdor Syiem as founding President and Vice-President respectively. The objective was that people of Shillong and Meghalaya should be capable of producing their own football club and their own footballers who could compete with the best in the country.
In 2008, Lajong Sports Social and Cultural Club was renamed Shillong Lajong Football Club, reflecting a larger ambition — to make Shillong a centre of football in the North East and to build a club capable of representing the region in India’s national football structure.
That dream took a significant step forward when Lajong qualified for the I-League in 2009, becoming the first club from the North East to reach India’s top national league.
Building a Development System
When we began this journey, Meghalaya undoubtedly possessed enormous footballing talent and an extraordinary passion for the game. What was largely absent, however, was a broad, systematic and sustained youth-development structure capable of identifying children at an early age and developing them progressively towards elite football.
This began to change significantly after 2008.
Under the presidency of DP Wahlang, with Larsing LD Sawyan as General Secretary, the Meghalaya Football Association (MFA) began placing much greater emphasis on youth and grassroots football. Larsing subsequently became President of the MFA in 2013 and remained in the leadership of the Association until 2023. During this period, youth competitions, grassroots football, coaching development and structured player pathways expanded considerably across Meghalaya. This period also saw the establishment of four artificial grounds in Meghalaya for the first time.
At Lajong, we had reached the same conclusion even earlier: if we wanted to survive at the national level, we could not simply depend upon purchasing established players every season. We had to stick to our founding objective of producing our own.
Lajong had started concentrating on youth development since 2002 and, following our qualification to the I-League in 2009, we launched Goal 2014 — an ambitious five-year programme designed to identify and develop young footballers capable of eventually representing Shillong Lajong at the highest level.
Goal 2014 was followed by Goal 2018 and subsequent youth-development programmes and age-group structures that created a pathway from junior football through the academy, reserves and ultimately the senior team.
The results did not come immediately. However, over time, Lajong academy players began representing India at youth level, competing successfully in national competitions and graduating into professional football.
In 2014, a remarkably young Lajong team, with an average age of around 19, won the Shillong Premier League (SPL). In 2018, Shillong Lajong became national champions by winning the AIFF U-18 Youth League. Our Under-19 team went on to win the Meghalaya Super League (MSL) in 2019.
Many players developed through Lajong have subsequently represented India at different levels, while numerous others have gone on to play for clubs across India’s professional leagues.
Why Lajong Looked Across the North East
There has sometimes been criticism that Lajong recruited heavily from other North Eastern states during its early national-league years. That criticism needs to be understood in its historical context.
When Lajong entered the I-League in 2009, Meghalaya simply did not possess a sufficiently large pool of players who had benefited from ten or more years of structured elite youth development. We therefore had to do two things simultaneously: survive in India’s national league while building the development system that would eventually produce more players from Meghalaya. We looked to Manipur, Mizoram, Assam and elsewhere across the North East. We make no apology for that.
We continue to believe that harnessing the collective footballing strength of the North East is essential if clubs from this region are to compete sustainably against the best teams in India.
But our core objective has always been — and will always remain — to optimise the talent available within Meghalaya first, and then complement it with the best talent from the wider North East and elsewhere where necessary.
Today, fortunately, the situation is very different from 2009.
The Baby League Generation
One of the most important interventions came through the Meghalaya Football Association.
In 2018, the MFA in collaboration with Tata Trusts and the All India Football Federation organised the first Baby League in India at the JN Stadium and MFA ground simultaneously.
Enthused by the success of the league, the AIFF subsequently adopted the template and expanded the concept across the country. Thus the AIFF Golden Baby Leagues, primarily covering the U-6 to U-12 age groups, were born.
Subsequently, the MFA with the support of the government of Meghalaya organised the first Meghalaya Baby League programme where over 1,600 boys and girls participated.
Consider what that means today. A 12-year-old who participated in the first Baby League in 2018 is approximately 19 years old today. That is almost exactly the age of the new generation of players we are now seeing emerging through the Shillong Premier League and other competitions across Meghalaya. Many more will emerge in the subsequent
years.
We are currently witnessing a new wave of talent in the state. This is not coincidental.
Football Development Is Generational
This is perhaps the most important lesson from Lajong’s experience. Football development is a generational project. What we sow today may take ten to fifteen years to reap.
The footballers emerging in Meghalaya today are therefore, in many ways, the products of decisions and investments made a decade or more ago.
The experience has given us enormous confidence about what Meghalaya can produce over the next decade if we now provide our young players with substantially better infrastructure, coaching, sports science and competition.
The Next Chapter — A World-Class Centre of Excellence
When Shillong Lajong sold its stake in NorthEast United FC, we immediately procured 15 acres of land at Umniuh village near Umiam with one principal objective — to rebuild Lajong’s football-development structure from the ground up and establish a world class Centre of Excellence.
The Academy will consist of one hybrid football ground, one artificial ground and one half ground besides swimming pools, all medical and sports science infrastructure and a residential block to house more than 100 players.
Our unexpected qualification back into the I-League in 2023 subsequently delayed our immediate priorities. We had to invest once again in national league participation, first in the I-League and subsequently in the IFL. It was difficult for the club to invest in both I-League participation and infrastructure development at the same time. As a result, the academy project was delayed.
At the same time, it has made our own priorities absolutely clear. Shillong Lajong will now place the development of its academy and a world-class Centre of Excellence in Meghalaya at the very top of its agenda. We consider this so important that, if necessary, we are prepared to reconsider our participation in the IFL from next season and redirect those resources towards building the academy.
The Club has already met the Honourable Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Shri Conrad Sangma to seek the support and assistance of the government in the establishment of the Lajong Academy and have attained a favourable response from him. We look forward to further deliberations with the government on the matter.
We believe that our long-term future cannot be measured merely by which league Lajong participates in next year. It must be measured by what Lajong looks like twenty years from now.
Identity, Philosophy and Lajong
We have always admired football clubs with a powerful sense of identity. FC Barcelona is an obvious example. La Masia does not simply produce footballers. It develops players within
a footballing philosophy that ultimately influences the identity and playing style of the senior team. Barcelona-developed players were at the heart of Spain’s World Cup triumph in 2010. Sixteen years later, Barcelona and La Masia products again played an important role in Spain’s 2026 World Cup-winning generation.
We similarly admire Athletic Club Bilbao and Real Sociedad, two clubs that demonstrate how regional identity, youth development and elite professional football can reinforce one another. We do not seek to copy these clubs.
We want to learn from their principles and create something authentically our own — a Lajong football identity rooted in Meghalaya and the North East. Our aspiration is eventually to develop players from childhood within a recognisable Lajong philosophy and
style of play, progressing through clearly defined age groups into our senior team.
Our Responsibility to the Next Generation
We are proud that Shillong Lajong has sustained participation in India’s national football structure for more than fifteen years. We are proud of the players we have developed for Indian football and of those who have represented the national team and professional clubs throughout the country. We are also proud that perhaps the most widely recognised Khasi word in India today is “Lajong” — “our own.” But past achievements cannot be our destination.
The next phase must be about creating an institution that will outlive all of us. Our vision is for every promising young boy or girl from Meghalaya to enter the Lajong development system and have access to quality pitches, professional coaching, education, nutrition, sports science and regular competition — with a clearly visible pathway all the way to professional football. Most importantly, we want the next generation of Meghalaya to grow up with their own home grown club to support, represent and eventually inherit.
Lajong was created in Meghalaya,
Its identity was forged here.
Its strongest supporters are here.
And its future will remain rooted here.
Football development requires patience. It requires investment without immediate reward. It requires accepting that many of the people who plant the seeds may never personally enjoy the harvest. But that is precisely what building an institution means.
Lajong has been built over 43 years and has competed for more than fifteen years on the national stage. We now look towards the next generation. Slowly, steadily and with renewed determination, our objective is to ensure that Shillong Lajong continues to
grow from strength to strength and that Meghalaya becomes one of India’s great centres for the development of football talent and Shillong, the home venue of North East India’s largest home grown club.
What we sow today, the next generation will reap.
