5 new things you will see in ISL next season
With two more teams added to the Indian Super League’s roster of teams, the popular franchise league is all set to get a massive facelift ahead of its upcoming season.
Bengaluru FC and a team owned by Tata Steel are set to become the new ISL entrants in the coming season after they were declared to have come through the bidding process with flying colours earlier today. With the two new clubs entering the ISL scene, a sense of intrigue is pervading the entire Indian football scene and the new changes will lend a new lease of life to the sport in the country as a whole.
With more teams, it is expected that the ISL will undergo a slew of changes and here are a few that will be a novelty in the 2017–18 season of the franchise league.
#1 More number of teams, more matches
This comes as a football fan’s delight as two more teams will lead to 34 more matches in the ISL next season. With all the ten teams set to play home and away in the first stage of the tournament before heading to the semi-finals and final, the ISL will be held over an extended period of time, going away from its earlier three-month model.
To add to that, the league in 2017–18 will be staged for a period of five months instead of three, and this will stand to change in the subsequent seasons. It is expected that the ISL will run for seven months from 2018-19.