Indian football
ISL 2026-27 starts in October, and the calendar is the real story for Indian coaches
The thirteenth edition of the Indian Super League kicks off on 10 October and runs to May. Thirteen teams, home and away, and the ISL Cup playoffs are back after a season without them. Most of the coverage has been about start dates. The part that changes my working week is the shape of the season itself.
A seven month league with a double round robin and a knockout at the end is a completely different planning problem from a compressed season. It means two blocks of work, not one. You periodise to be competitive from October, then you build a second peak for the spring, because finishing in the top six and finishing first are no longer the same outcome. The top two go straight into the semi finals and the sides placed third to sixth have to win their way through, so there is now a real prize for being good in March rather than merely safe.
Why the playoffs coming back matters on the training pitch
Without a playoff, a league season is a long flat line. You manage load, you avoid disasters, you accumulate. With a playoff, the last six weeks are a different competition, and the squad has to arrive there with something in the tank. That is a decision you make in November, not in April. The clubs that handle it well will be the ones whose coaches were allowed to rest players during a winter run of fixtures that looked, at the time, like it needed everybody.
The other change worth reading properly is the continental route. From 2027-28, as IANS reported when the AFC revised its slot allocation, Indian clubs drop into the AFC Challenge League, Asia's third tier club competition, rather than the AFC Champions League Two above it that East Bengal are playing in this season. Nobody wants to hear that their title earns a smaller reward. For a coaching staff it changes recruitment conversations, because the pitch you make to a player about next season includes what continental football he is actually going to play.
The instability is not a side note
Two things happened this summer that tell you more about coaching in this league than any tactical trend. Jamshedpur withdrew and Churchill Brothers took over their sporting licence. And Diamond Harbour won the Indian Football League, then went down without playing a match because the participation fees were not paid.
Read that as a coach with a family and a contract. Clubs change hands, licences move, and a season's work can be undone by an invoice. It is why every experienced coach in India keeps his badges current, keeps a written record of what he has actually done at each club, and keeps his own notes on players rather than relying on a club's analysis department being there next year. That is not cynicism, it is basic professional hygiene in a league that is still finding its structure.
The foreign player question, again
The limits on registering and fielding overseas players have been reworked once more, and the reporting on the exact numbers has not settled, so I will not pretend to quote them. What matters for the group I work with is the principle, and the principle has been moving in one direction for a while: fewer imported places in a starting eleven, more minutes that have to be filled by somebody developed here.
That is the opportunity in all of this. If the on field allowance for foreign players keeps tightening, then a coach who can turn a nineteen year old into a first team footballer inside a season becomes the most valuable person at the club. Not the coach with the best pre match presentation. The one whose players are visibly better in April than they were in October.
The national team faces the same test on a shorter clock this autumn, and I have set out what India's three week camp before Panama, Brazil and Uruguay should really be for.
Update, 28 September: what the fixture list confirms
The league published the first phase of the fixture list on 26 September, as ANI reported and Khel Now confirmed, and it bears out the shape described above. Phase 1 is 78 matches between 10 October and 17 January, in which each of the 13 clubs plays every other club once. The return fixtures follow in Phase 2, making 24 league matches for each club across the season. The season opens with Bengaluru FC against Sporting Club Delhi at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium, followed by FC Goa against Chennaiyin FC at Fatorda. Fifty-three of the 78 Phase 1 matches fall on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, and the top six go through to the playoffs, whose fixtures will be announced later.
Two details matter for coaching staff. East Bengal, the defending champions, miss the first game week because of their AFC Champions League Two commitments and start on 18 October against Churchill Brothers, so their opening weeks will be shaped by Asian football as much as by the league. And the league stops for the FIFA window in November, which gives every staff a planned block about a month into the first phase. A gap in the calendar is only useful if you decide in advance what it is for.
One more thing, since it is going to come up
The AIFF has floated renaming itself the Football Federation of Bharat. I have no strong feelings about the letterhead. I have very strong feelings about the coaching pathway underneath it, because that pathway is the reason any of us are licensed to work at this level at all. Whatever the badge on the building says, the D to C to B to A route is the thing that has to keep improving.