by Mark Szczuka, Prost Soccer’s unlimited world soccer correspondent
Indian Super League Final (Kerala Blasters v Atlético de Kolkata) Sunday 18 December 2016
In front of 55,000 passionate home fans, Kerala Blasters lost out dramatically on penalties to Atlético de Kolkata in the Indian Super League (ISL) Final.
In only its 3rd season, the ISL is fast becoming an important football tournament in Asia, thanks to significant investment by amongst others, popular Indian Bollywood film stars and Indian Cricket stars. It is also attracting a lot of attention due to the rule that each of the 8 teams in the league must have between 8 and 10 foreign players. This rule, and the large amounts of money being invested, has resulted in many world-known football players such as Diego Forlan, John Arne Riise, Florent Malouda and Cafu joining ISL teams recently. There are also a number of well-known football managers now in India including Zico, Materazzi, Zambrotta and Steve Coppell.
There is substantial potential in a country that has a population of 1.3 billion people, where football is the 2nd most popular sport after cricket. Indeed the aim of the ISL is for India to become a global football power and qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This would be some achievement given that India is currently ranked 137th in FIFA’s World Rankings, behind countries such as Luxembourg and Madagascar.
The format of the ISL tournament (which runs alongside India’s other league tournament) is a series of home and away matches from October in the 8 host cities (Chennai, Delhi, Goa, Guwahati, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune) followed by home and away semi finals for the teams finishing in the top 4, culminating in a single final match in December.
It was by chance that Kerala Blasters found themselves in the fortunate position of playing the final at their own stadium in Kochi on the south coast of the Indian Ocean in front of a sea of yellow-wearing colourful fans. There were chaotic scenes outside the stadium in the build up to the match as the officials closed the entrance gates at 17:30 ahead of the match kick off at 19:00 after the stadium was declared full ! This left several thousand fans with official tickets stranded outside the stadium.
The ISL is attracting large crowds and has become the 4th largest football league in the world for highest average attendances, behind only Germany, England and Spain. Part of this is due to keeping ticket prices accessible in a 3rd world country – prices for the final ranged from 300 Rupees (less than 5 dollars) to 500 Rupees (just over 7 dollars) for the most expensive seats!
Mohammed Rafi put Kerala ahead after 37 minutes, much to the delight of the home crowd. However this was silenced when Portuguese internationalist Henrique Sereno scored his first goal for the club to equalise just before half time. After numerous chances for both teams, the match continued without further goals into extra time before Kolkata eventually settled the contest by winning 4-3 in a penalty shoot-out.
