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“Lots of young players are coming up…The intensity and temperament of the league has taken a jump over the last few seasons” Anirudh Thapa, Chennaiyin midfielder
All being well, the 2020-21 Indian Super League (ISL) season will start on November 21 for its biggest and longest campaign yet, because what started out as a brief but glamorous sideshow in 2014 has now become the main event in this country of 1.4 billion.
Six years ago, the I-League was the top tier but it struggled to compete with the glamour of eight new franchises in the ISL, owned by a mixture of Bollywood stars, cricket players, big business and European clubs, that burst onto the scene.
Suddenly the likes of Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg were playing in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata and being coached by Zico, Marco Materazzi and Peter Reid. Average attendances were 24,000 and with a media profile that the I-League could only dream of, it was inevitable that there would be a debate as to how the ISL could become a bigger part of the football scene.
That debate ended last year when the Super League, which started out as an eight-team ten-week affair but will now have 11 teams and last for almost six months, was recognised as the country’s top tier. The I-League is now number two though there is not yet promotion and relegation – that should happen in a couple of years.
“The League has changed a lot since its inception,” says Anirudh Thapa of Chennaiyin, one of the league’s brightest talents. “It has become a longer league with more teams.”
Just as the national team has improved, qualifying for the 2019 Asian Cup, so has the ISL with more investment meaning better facilities and coaching, even if there is still a long way to go. “Lots of young players are coming up,” added Thapa. “The intensity and temperament of the league has taken a jump over the last few seasons. The reduction in foreign players in the squad has also allowed younger players to get more game time on the pitch.”
With the ISL becoming number one, the big debate moved on to what to do with the two biggest teams in Indian football which had been playing in the I-League. When the Kolkata giants of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan meet at the city’s Salt Lake Stadium, there are
crowds close to 100,000. It was unthinkable that the pair would not be in the top tier.
That has been solved. In January, Mohun Bagan merged with ISL club ATK to become known as ATK Mohun Bagan. East Bengal, were confirmed as team number 11 in September.
It means the ISL will have the traditional Kolkata derby for the first time after all, though it won’t be very traditional. Instead of the usual massive crowd there will be an empty arena in Goa. The entire season will be played in this west-coast region known internationally more for beautiful beaches than the beautiful game, though it is actually one of the subcontinent’s football hotbeds.
FC Goa actually finished top of the standings last season (and booked a place in the group stage of the 2021 Asian Champions League, another sign that the ISL is the main show in town) but lost out in the first game of the final series to Chennaiyin. The southerners went on to lose the final to ATK, who had defeated Bengaluru in the other semi-final.
Those four should be in the mix once more. Goa, a former Portuguese enclave, have a strong Spanish streak with coach Juan Ferrando preparing for his first season with a number of compatriots to choose from – though Ferran Corominas, the ex-Espanyol striker who has scored almost a goal a game in the past three seasons, looks to be leaving.
Bengaluru, apart from the two Kolkata clubs, the only other team to make the move from the I-League, are led by Indian icon Sunil Chhetri and international goalkeeper and just-named Player of the Year Gupreet Singh at the other end.
ATK Mohun Bagan have last year’s joint-top scorer, Fiji forward Roy Krishna while Chennaiyin have lost their Lithuanian goal getter, Nerijus Valskis. He has joined Jamshedpur, now coached by Owen Coyle, and the team, established by steel giant Tata in 2017, has assembled a well-balanced squad that has ambitions of a top-four finish and a place in the play-offs.
All eyes will officially be on the ISL for the first time but with the coronavirus still around, just finishing the season without too many complications will be enough, for now.