Indian Football Super League – What Can We Expect For Season 2019/20?

Football has gained massive popularity in India in the last ten years. It is not an uncommon thing to see some of the European players making a move to Asia nowadays, as contracts can be very lucrative. This goes more for China than India, but still, the top flight division has become much more interesting. Let’s do a short re-cap of things happened in the previous campaign and see what we can expect from the upcoming season.

Before starting, we would also like to explain the format of Indian Football Super League. Ten teams are competing in the regular season, playing each other two times. After every squad has played 18 games, the final standings are determined. Only the top four teams will make it to the playoffs, semi-finals to be precise.

In case you missed it, Bengaluru has won the championship after beating Goa 1-0 in the extra time. Rahul Bheke was the hero, scoring the only goal in the 117th minute. These two teams were the best throughout the whole year, so it was nice to see them make it to the finals. During the regular season, both Bengaluru and Goa have collected 34 points each from 18 games. Goa has had much better goal difference though, +16 in comparison to Bengaluru’s +7.

Even though both clubs are relatively young when it comes to existence, there is a big rivalry going on. There was four head to head clashes between them so far. Four of them were won by Bengaluru, only one by Goa. The average number of goals seen in these is over 3.00 per match, so it is always fun to be an observer, even if you are neutral. This year’s finals were played at Mumbai Football Arena, observed by 8000 people. That is a success for Indian football but this number is expected to grow in the future.

A perfect example of a thing we mentioned in the first paragraph, a European player joining the Indian league, is Goa’s Coro. This Spaniard arrived in 2017 and played two seasons for this club so far. In the debut season, he scored 18 goals, followed by 16 goals in the previous campaign. He eventually won the golden boot as the first goalscorer of the league. The MVP title was fully deserved – this player was first on the list of assists as well.

When it comes to other big foreign stars in the league, there is also Bartholomew Ogbeche. This Nigerian striker played for many known teams in Europe: PSG, Bastia, Metz, Alaves, Valladolid, Cadiz, Middlesbrough, Willem II before making a move to India. In his debut season, he bagged 12 goals.

The last player we would like to mention here is former Olympique Marseille and Sheffield Wednesday’s player Pape Amodou Sougou. Senegalese midfielder also arrived in India last summer and already made a big impact, both on team’s (Mumbai City) results and the league overall. His team made it to the playoffs but got eliminated in the semi-finals. Sougou added 12 goals to his name, including two assists as well.

Judging by the odds, the champions Bengaluru FC are the biggest favorite to win the title next year as well. They are followed by Goa and Mumbai City, with slightly fewer chances given by most bookies. If you fancy betting on these outright markets, make sure you are only betting with the top Betting Sites out there. Securing great promotions can increase your chances of being successful when betting on Indian football.

There were a couple of signed players as well. The first reinforcement came from Spanish tier two club Ponferradina. Luisma has joined Bengaluru’s lines, as well as Chencho Gyeltshen from Neroca.