As the top flight of Indian football, Indian Super League (ISL) is about to start this month from 20th November, the prestigious I-League, now deemed second fiddle to ISL, has officially announced that it will start its 2020-21 season from 9th January.
Two top teams of I-League, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal will ply their trade in ISL from this season. But I-League has its own history and will always be an important league in Indian football.
The whole I-League tournament will be taking place in Kolkata. All the 11 teams will be inside a bio-secure bubble. They will arrive at least 2 weeks before the tournament starts.
Mr Sunando Dhar, CEO, Leagues, lauded Government of West Bengal as well as IFA for their “unconditional support” to stage the tournaments without any fuss.
He said: “We can’t thank Government of West Bengal and IFA enough for their unconditional support to hosting the Hero I-League Qualifier this year. Without their support, we couldn’t even think of hosting the tournament smoothly.”
“Hero I-League Qualifier was a stage rehearsal for the next edition of Hero I-League as it’ll be a longer and more challenging tournament from every single aspect. We’ll work with them hand in hand to make it a grand success and we’re confident to pull it off successfully,”.
All the 11 teams will face each other once in the first leg of the league before they are divided into two different groups. Top six teams, according to the points table, will face each other once again to decide the winner whereas the other five teams will play against each other in a one-leg league format. The team with maximum points (cumulative points collected from all fifteen matches) will be the winner of Hero I-League 2020-21.
All the matches will be played behind closed doors. The matches will be telecasted live on 1Sports. The match schedule will be released later.
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