If these 5 ISL sides could play in Europe, where would they be?
Indian football fanatics have persistently aspired or rather demanded that our teams go out and play outside Asia. Of many ingredients which constitute a footballing nation, competitiveness is an important one. Hence, playing outside Asia, which inevitably means that you are playing against a better-ranked team or in a reputed league, one can definitely expect a decent amount of brilliance from the team or the individual.
Taking examples from the current breed, Sunil Chhetri and Gurpreet Singh Sandhu are two names which are making quite some round around, and both happen to have played or is still playing in leagues abroad. Again, the reason why the victory against Puerto Rico is a celebrated one is because it came against a non-Asian team, ranked higher than us.
Now, keeping international assignments away, the craze primarily today, at least in the popular perception, has been regarding the club/franchise base domestic leagues and the subsequent international club leagues. It wouldn’t be very wrong if an average follower of the game associate England more to the Premier League than the English national team.
The emergence of the Indian Super League (ISL) here hence is a crucial junction for Indian football. For the game to develop in a country, the competitiveness and to a bit glamour within the domestic circuit is very important. And ISL, by bringing in international stars and by pumping in money is sort of at least achieving it on paper.
It will, however, take some time if we want to actually analyze the impact of the league on the performance of the Indian players. But the fact that ISL has risen the playing standards in India (performatively and infrastructurally) is a little more evident and hence, more often than before, we can actually imagine Indian clubs playing abroad.
The problem however with ISL clubs is inconsistency. It’s a really short league and in both the editions that has happened as of yet, there has been drastic changes not just in the team line-up, but also in the managerial positions. So on one read, it might just sound a little too dumb to analyze the playing styles of these clubs and figure out which league in Europe they fit in. But based on hyperbolic analysis and statistical evaluations, if five ISL clubs were to play in any European League. This would be:
Chennaiyin FC- Italian League
The champions of the second edition of the ISL, Chennaiyin FC is the only team who goes into the third edition with the same coach. And with the Italian managing the side, it isn’t a surprise that the club has been pitched to play in the Italian professional league (Maybe in the Serie B).
Traditionally, Italian teams are defence-oriented and tactically shrewd though things are changing now. But with the manager of the team himself being a defender, you can predict a sound backline for the team. In the last season of the ISL, the team made 519 tackles and 204 interceptions. And in the process, the team scored 32 goals while conceded only 23 goals.
Thus, the team in total went full offensive (they were placed second in number of goals scored), but also kept their defence intact. Last season, they also had the highest goalscorer of the league (Mendoza), while Thoi Singh made the most number of tackles for the team.
Thus, the team, as per analysis fits in perfect to be in the Italian league.