ISL sheds foreign pros ahead of new season

Spotlight falls on home-grown talent as event begins tomorrow

The Indian Super League has slashed the number of high-earning foreign stars for its new season starting tomorrow but foreign coaches, including former England players Teddy Sheringham and Steve Coppell, will be in charge of every team.

Indian fans have been used to seeing the likes of Italy’s Alessandro Del Piero, French striker Nicolas Anelka and Uruguayan Diego Forlan during the ISL’s first three seasons.

But as the cash-rich league comes under pressure to nurture home-grown players, teams are now required to have at least six Indians on the field.

The veterans are nearly all gone, with Atletico de Kolkata’s Robbie Keane and Kerala Blasters’ former Manchester United stars Dimitar Berbatov and Wes Brown among the few who have tasted football’s big-time. It means the spotlight will now fall on the Indian players, as well as the foreign coaches in the new championship which has been expanded to 10 teams, increasing the season to almost five months.

Good decision

Among the managers are Sheringham, 51, who joined reigning champions Kolkata in July, and Coppell at new team Jamshedpur, which is backed by the Tata business empire. Former Real Madrid player Miguel Angel Portugal is at Delhi Dynamos, while Ranko Popovic at FC Pune City has coached in his native Serbia, Austria, Japan, Spain and Thailand.

Sheringham welcomed the new player restrictions, which follow a period of unaccustomed success for 105th-ranked India after they qualified for the Asian Cup for only the fourth time.

“I think it’s a good decision to have six Indians on the pitch at all times and it means Indians getting more chances to play and show their skills,” said Sheringham, whose side start against Kerala Blasters in Friday’s opener in Kochi.