If Marco Materazzi and Zico are not obvious dugout adversaries, it seems fair to point out that the milieu in which they are operating is entirely conducive to suspension of disbelief. The pair will cajole Chennaiyin FC and Goa FC, respectively, from the touchlines in the second Indian Super League final on Sunday and those watching will admire a by-now familiar mixture of local talent, foreign veterans and lower-profile imports who might have been forgiven for thinking that occasions of this grandeur would pass them by.
It is an arena for unlikely heroes and Materazzi’s Chennaiyin were almost outdone at the semi-final stage by a player who was relegated to England’s Conference last season. Iain Hume has had a useful career scoring goals for Tranmere, Leicester and Preston among others, although he was not able to keep the former in League Two on a brief return to Prenton Park last season. His last-gasp header against the bar for Atlético de Kolkata, who had pulled back a 3-0 first-leg deficit to 3-2, showed the fine line between success and failure – particularly when Chennaiyin added a clinching goal on the break in added time.
But Hume was a success in his second ISL campaign, sitting second in the scoring charts with 11 goals, and he is not alone among exports from the English leagues. Chris Dagnall, best known for spells at Scunthorpe, Rochdale and Leyton Orient, scored six goals for Kerala Blasters and his team-mate Antonio German – formerly of QPR and Brentford and, at 23, perhaps the most likely to profit from this stint in the shop window – joined him on that figure. That their club’s manager was Terry Phelan and its majority owner is Sachin Tendulkar adds to the sense of displacement; then again, this is a league in which Roberto Carlos, with Delhi Dynamos, could be seen passing instructions on to the promising on-loan West Brom striker Adil Nabi via club captain Florent Malouda and another seasoned international in John Arne Riise.
Materazzi, who also managed Chennaiyin in their run to the play-off semi-finals in 2014, has done his cause for a job back in Europe no harm. It is probably no surprise that Chennaiyin, whose team includes Elano and the former Hull and Bolton defender Bernard Mendy, had the best defensive record in this season’s league and the 42-year-old has created a strong togetherness at a club co-owned by the cricketer MS Dhoni.
“The whole team believes in itself and the whole team is attached to me,” he said after the victory over Kolkata, and – whether through politeness or a genuine wish – he has not ruled out a third season in charge.
A longer-term commitment might be welcome, but the ISL is not really cut out for those looking to set down roots. To refer to a “season” is pushing things – this one began on 3 October and there are those who query the broader usefulness of a competition that downs tools, 61 matches later, within 11 weeks of its opening game. The I-League, India’s older and more traditionally-formatted competition, is more conducive to those with an eye on the long haul but it is a less tempting proposition and German, to give one example, recently turned down an offer from the East Bengal club with the prospect of a return to England still alive.
Yet, while the structure of Indian football still raises plenty of questions (can the two leagues coexist? Does any of this serve the chronically underachieving national team well?), there is an extent to which the figures do not lie. This season’s average attendance of just over 27,000 is around 1,000 higher than that of the league’s debut incarnation, with every club seeing an increase except for North East United. A deafening capacity crowd of 68,340 watched the semi-final second leg at Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium.
Television viewers have reportedly spent 36% more time watching the matches, and they have enjoyed a league that averages a shade over three goals a game. It was widely trumpeted that only the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga saw higher crowds globally in 2014; that may well be the case again and, while nobody can sensibly extrapolate too much from such a truncated competition, there is little question that the domestic audience has been energised at a time when English football’s reach poses a constant threat to local leagues in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
That should be in evidence again on Sunday when Zico’s Goa, who topped the regular season standings, start the final as favourites – although the choice of their Fatorda Stadium to host it, a decision taken before the season began, seems strange given the ground’s capacity of 19,000. Regardless, victory would be a feather in the cap for Zico, whose coaching career has been itinerant and – after a promising period with Japan in the 2000s – generally a disappointment. He has been critical of the ISL’s decision to allow teams to field six foreigners but says standards have improved since last year.
There is a sense that the league, which benefited from the use of top I-League players for the first time this year, is in fact starting to get its balance right. Perhaps it is just a shame that, whether or not its composition stretches your credulity, the next chance to find out will not present itself for another 10 months.
