ISL12 set to kick-off amid turmoil behind the scenes

Owen Coyle discusses challenges ahead of the Indian Super League season, emphasizing the need for pre-season prep amid club disputes over management issues.

Kolkata: “We are trying to get six weeks of pre-season work into three.” Sharing his experience with Jamshedpur FC where he is back on a two-season deal, Owen Coyle was speaking for most Indian Super League (ISL) teams. “But the good thing is that football starts to get played again.” This time, Coyle, 59, was speaking for everyone connected with India’s top tier: players, staff, fans and the All India Football Federation (AIFF). “Can’t wait,” said Mohun Bagan Super Giant’s Dimitrios Petratos.

Problems remain. Hours before kick-off, all 14 participating clubs wrote to All India Football Federation (AIFF) seeking suspension of the interim committee formed to run the league while stating that all decisions be taken by absolute majority (75%).

This was after two members, Dhruv Sood of Sporting Delhi and FC Goa’s Ravi Puskur, left the committee which, the clubs’ letter said, affects the “functioning, composition and representative character of the Interim Management Committee.”

This was after two clubs, among them FC Goa, wrote to AIFF saying they will “defer to the Federation and the collective judgement of participating clubs” on Churchill Brothers’s inclusion in ISL12.

The clubs’ decision to dissolve the interim committee is to help stave off pressure, a lot of it political, to include Churchill in the competition. It comes after 14 clubs had written to AIFF saying they oppose a late inclusion because it lacked sporting merit. AIFF had, at an emergent executive committee meeting on Thursday, quashed Churchill’s bid for inclusion because only one team, I-League champions Inter Kashi as decided by Court of Arbitration for Sport, can be promoted to ISL12.

That’s not where problems end. Debutants Inter Kashi do not have a fixed home venue, Mohammedan Sporting do not have a foreign player, Odisha FC have not played all season but all three will be part of the 14-team round robin single-leg league.

With most clubs having suspended operations and asked players and staff to take a pay cut, the start of the league did not look possible at the turn of the year. But here we are, all set for a double-header start on Saturday.

The season will be televised and live streamed and apart from ₹1.25 crore as prize purse, the winners will get a shot at Asia (barring Mohun Bagan Super Giant who are banned and FC Goa who have got one by winning the Super Cup). The union sports ministry requesting state governments to “waive”, “subsidise” or give “concessional” rates for stadiums and practice facilities has got a favourable response.

Four teams – Bengaluru FC, Chennaiyin FC, Odisha FC and Mohammedan Sporting – will start with Indian head coaches and that did not look possible either at the end of 2024-25. For Renedy Singh, it will be an opportunity to coach his former club and India teammate Sunil Chhetri at Bengaluru FC.

Singh will have a good set of Indian players but his challenge will be to adapt his style of trying to win the ball high up the pitch and play out from the back like he has with the Bengaluru FC reserves. For Mehrajuddin Wadoo, it will mean proving that Mohammedan Sporting’s all-Indian squad can hold its own against teams with four foreigners on the pitch.

That too in a season – rather “a 13-match tournament,” according to Antonio Lopez Habas, ISL’s most successful coach who is now with Inter Kashi – which starts with relegation being a reality.

“You cannot start thinking about that,” said Wadoo whose team finished last in 2024-25. Coyle, who has coached in the Premier League where “promotion and relegation are part of the culture” and in Major League Soccer where there is no “punishment for a bad season” said he isn’t thinking about it as “my teams usually punch above their weight.” But what the prospect of the drop does is add to the jeopardy, he said.

Like many coaches, including Sergio Lobera at defending champions Mohun Bagan Super Giant, Singh has inherited a squad and hence could find it difficult to do what he has with a side he has built.

Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Kashi, Jamshedpur FC, the first team to agree to play irrespective of the format, have the full complement of six imports. Kerala Blasters, who will kick-off the season against defending champions Mohun Bagan here before FC Goa host Inter Kashi, have five, all first-timers to the team, said coach David Catalá.

The bigger question for Coyle is match sharpness. Here, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal should have an advantage as they have been training for over two months. “We had the tools to do that, credit to our club,” said Lobera.

At a time when clubs have been reluctant to add players, Mohun Bagan signed Mehtab Singh and Amey Ranawade as cover for injured right-back Ashish Rai and had earlier replaced Greg Stewart with Robinho. Mohun Bagan stuttered in the Super Cup prompting former Jose Molina to say they lacked a holding midfielder but Lobera said “time for excuses is over.”

After “10 months of inactivity”, Habas termed the season an “attractive challenge”. The winner of two ISL cups and a league shield, Habas is 68 and the oldest coach this term. He is also one of the six Spanish head coaches and among the nine retained.