Arunava about Football A look at football & the world through my eyes!
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The fourth season of the Indian Super League kicks off at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi tonight in a rematch of last seasons final between Kerala Blasters and champions ATK.
ISL – Season 4 will be defining one for the three year old league with the addition of two new teams in former I-League champions Bengaluru FC and newcomers Jamshedpur FC to make it a 10 team affair, a longer duration from mid-November 2017 to mid-March 2018 and a spot in the Asian club competition up for grabs for the ISL champions for the first time.
The Indian Super League which in its first three seasons of existence had more of a tournament character than that of a league despite playing a full 14 match league season was played only for 11 weeks from October to December so far and it is now maturing into a proper full-fledged league.
It still isn’t a European-style league running from August/September to May, but with the changes done and set to happen in the years to come, a full season Indian Super League is surely coming.
Coming back to ISL-4, it will be interesting to see how the 10 team do with most teams having seen a complete overhaul of their squads, new managers coming in.
It is difficult say at this stage who will do how as the Indian Super League has seen a lot of surprises over the years in who made the semifinals or won the ISL title following the finish of the league phase. Consistancy has not been a real factor over the first three seasons as a late push has made the semifinals a reality for teams, who at some stage were bottom of the pack, the biggest example being Chennaiyin FC in 2015 before they went on to win the ISL title.
But one big change will be that with 10 participating franchises, the fight for the four semifinal sots will get tougher as six teams instead of four in the past will lose missing out on the knockout stages.
Now let the football begin. Common India, Let’s Football!!!
