Form the key as ISL enters business end

                                           

After more than two months of action, the Indian Super League (ISL) has finally entered its business end. The league stage is done and dusted, and the semifinalists have been identified. Here are a few talking points from the league thus far:

Momentum

If last season’s evidence is anything to go by, momentum matters greatly in how teams perform in the semifinals. Chennaiyin FC, after having sealed a top-two place, cooled off to never recover. Kerala Blasters made the top-four in the nth moment and ended up being a finalist.

This year, if this pattern is to repeat itself, Chennaiyin, on the back of four consecutive wins, seems the in-form team, closely followed by FC Goa, with a draw and two wins. Hence it will not be a surprise if one sees the odds spiking in favour of these two.

“It’s almost an even playing field. There is parity. From the top to the bottom, it’s tight”.

These were FC Pune City manager David Platt’s words. In such a close league, every point matters and nobody understood its value better than Goa.

It lost only one of its last eight matches and more importantly it found multiple ways to achieve its goal.

Goa is a side which likes to have a lot of the ball. Mumbai City FC and Kerala experienced the worst of it letting in a combined 12 goals in two matches.

But against Chennai and Delhi Dynamos away, Goa sat back, even loaded its eleven with five defenders once, and won the game counter-attacking. Even Chennai’s bull-run towards the end can be attributed to manager Marco Materazzi tapping into his team’s versatility in the nick of time.

India shining

Perhaps the single most important objective the promoters of the ISL are said to have is to improve Indian football. In that context, it really did not help that India failed spectacularly in its World Cup qualification campaign. The negative publicity it attracted in the midst of the ISL season doused even the last flickering ember.

Yet, when seen individually, the Indian players’ performances have certainly gone up a notch as compared to 2014. True, there is only one Indian in the top-5 goal scorers’ list — Sunil Chhetri with seven goals — but they have managed to shine in many different ways.

Like Kerala’s Mehtab Hossain who has the most number of tackles at 69 and NorthEast United FC goalie T.P. Rehenesh (most saves at 47).

The likes of Thoi Singh (started 12 out of 14 games), Jayesh Rane and Jeje Lalpekhlua for Chennai, Chhetri for Mumbai, Mandar Rao Dessai for Goa, Robin Singh for Delhi and Mohammed Rafi for Kerala among others have surely come to the fore.

Nobody has been an object of scorn as much as the ISL referee this season. After repeatedly refusing to comment on the refereeing standards, saying that he fears a “notice”, Zico at one point exclaimed that “he would go home” if it doesn’t improve. Materazzi even said that if his team failed to qualify for the last-four, it would be partly because of the referees.

Much of the managers’ ire is owing to the fact that inconsistent refereeing has seen a spurt in violent play. For example, Hossain’s two-footed stamp on John Stiven Mendoza in Chennai could have well ended the latter’s season. In a league with such short recovery times, the teams can hardly afford such disasters.