ISL-5 opener: ATK, Blasters have contrasting goals

KOLKATA : Headlining the things the Indian Super League (ISL) looks into while drawing up the fixtures is the kind of attention the opening match will get. To that end even though both finished in the bottom half of the table last term, ATK and Kerala Blasters, who kick-off season five here on Saturday, fit the bill alright.

They have played two of the four finals, in a league still in its infancy Kerala Blasters have been able to build a dedicated following --- at a mean of 31,763, they had the highest home attendance, over 10,000 more than the second team, last season --- and ATK are two-time winners based in a city that holds Asia’s oldest league and has clubs that are over 100 years old.

ATK and Kerala Blasters also typify the contrasting approaches teams have taken this season.

There are some for whom being in the present is the most important thing and in their red-and-white stripes, ATK would perhaps be the most prominent in that corner. not play this season,” said James.

A little before that ATK coach Steve Coppell, who has shied away from looking at things long-term in India, said he wasn’t involved in the construction of the squad.

“I am heavily dependent on him in the short term,” said Coppell referring to his assistant Sanjoy Sen. “His (Sen’s) experience and expertise in that area has been invaluable.”

That Kerala Blasters, according to Transfermarkt, have a squad valued at 1.95m euros while that of ATK is worth 3.3m euros too tells its own story. As does the fact that at 24.8 years, Kerala Blasters has the youngest squad in the competition while the average age of ATK is 27.4 years.

ATK have 18 new players in the squad and some of them --such as skipper Manuel Lanzarote who had 13 goals and six assists in 19 games last term --are among those paid the highest in the league.

Crucially for ATK, even though all seven foreigners are new, six of them did well in

ISL 4.

“We focused on those who have made this journey before,” Coppell said last week.

The former Manchester United midfielder who has coached Kerala Blasters and Jamshedpur FC has said he lays great emphasis on continuity, and recruits such as Lanzarote, Gerson Vieria, Everton Santos, John Johnson and Pronay Halder seem to be ATK’S way of doing that even as it rebuilds after the annus horriblis of 2017-18.

“This is a new beginning almost for ATK. We have a squad very different from last year,” said Coppell.

ATK have taken a different approach, said James, and it would be interesting to see in the first game who has got it right. BEIJING: American great Serena Williams was left out of the China Open draw on Friday as she appeared to call time on her season following her meltdown at the US Open.

Williams’ name, along with that of her sister Venus, did not appear on a list of 64 players ahead of the start of the tournament in Beijing, one of the women’s tour’s mandatory events.

It comes less than three weeks after the tempestuous US Open final, where Williams, 37, accused the umpire of lying and sexism in an angry rant during her 6-2, 6-4 defeat to Japan’s Naomi

Osaka.

In extraordinary scenes, Williams went into a tailspin after a warning for receiving coaching from the sidelines, smashing her racquet and being docked a point and then a game.

The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion later said she wanted to “move on” from the incident, but maintained that women players could not get away with “even half of what a guy can do”.

“Right now we are not, as it’s proven, in that same position,” she told Australia’s Channel Ten.