New Delhi [India], December 7 (ANI): Three rounds into the I-League 2024-25 and little has changed. These are the early verses of a season song yet taking shape and for the most part, this is just everyone riding out the winter. Churchill Brothers got off the mark with a first win of the season, leaving four teams yet to notch one in the I-League.
Five teams still remain unbeaten, and with two of those facing each other in Round 4, beginning on December 7, something is bound to break.
Call it the benefit of legacy, the paucity of experience or even pure fixture luck but the two newly promoted clubs, Dempo SC and Sporting Club Bengaluru could not have had more contrasting starts to the season. Dempo sit pretty in third, with two wins and a draw, yet to concede in the I-League this season. They have held an established, perennially-talented former champion Aizawl FC, beaten a sizzling underdog side that attacks without abandon, Shillong Lajong, and come out on top in a physical battle against Namdhari FC.
What more, they’ve done all this on the road, where they will stay when they take on Sporting Bengaluru. The hosts, meanwhile, languish at the bottom of the table, with three straight losses. They’ve conceded six in this period and finally got off the mark with one of their own in the last fixture against Churchill Brothers. If you read the signs, then they look ominous.
But there is another argument to be made. Sporting Bengaluru have made a couple of tough away trips to leaders Inter Kashi and unbeaten Aizawl and gave a good account of themselves in those games. Every team going up against Dempo this season will take the field aware of their legacy in the I-League. Few will be as unperturbed by it as Sporting Bengaluru. They know that the trudge up this hill began together, and despite the distance between them in the current table, the only numbers that really matter are the ones on the pitch. If you read the signs, then this should be the match of the week. A meeting between two promoted sides from the I-League 2.
Just one point separates Gokulam Kerala and Churchill Brothers in the table, and yet, reading their form guide is a bit like reading tea leaves. You never know what you will find, simply because there isn’t much there at all. Gokulam Kerala kicked off the season with a barnburner against Sreenidi Deccan, winning by the odd goal in five. All that joy has dropped away with two lacklustre draws to Real Kashmir and Aizawl. Churchill Brothers drew away in Shillong, lost a close game to Sreenidi Deccan and beat Sporting Bengaluru handily, a release said.
There is no doubting Churchill’s attacking strength this season, as long as Wayde Lekay keeps firing like he has in the opening three games. The South African leads the goalscoring charts with Inter Kashi’s Moroccan striker Domingo Berlanga. Their defence though, is yet to keep a clean sheet. The same could be said for the Malabarians. Between them these two teams have scored 11 goals and conceded 9. There is a strong chance this game turns out to be a scoring affair, but the reality is that both coaches would look to take things cautiously without sticking their neck out too much.
There is nothing separating Inter Kashi and Real Kashmir at the top of the table. Both teams have won two games and drawn one. They both had to grind out a win, cruise to another and suffer to take a point home. The difference though is in the way they’ve achieved any of it.
Looking at the dugout, it would be easy to draw up the cliches on the styles of football employed by either club, and weirdly enough they would be wildly wrong. Real Kashmir coach Ishfaq Ahmed was in charge of the India U17s, whose brilliant all-guns attacking football gained a lot of fans. Ahmed though is a practical man and has stuck to the principles of a defend-first ideology with Kashmir, who have traditionally been a side tough to break down, and not the most exuberant of scorers up front. The Snow Leopards have maintained that this season too, and are a side reliant on set-pieces for most of their goals.
In sharp contrast, Antonio Lopez Habas is best known to Indian football fans as the driver of the defensive arts. His sides have always been well-coached, well-drilled and supremely stingy to concede goals. They win titles doing so and have no qualms getting their hands dirty to do it. Big surprise then that they have only conceded one goal this season, in a drubbing of Delhi FC no less.
And up front, despite being blessed with the attacking talents of Berlanga, Edmund Lalrindika, Nikola Stojanovic and company, they’ve struggled to get going… until they have. Five of their six goals this season have come in one game, and otherwise, they lacked the clinical edge for goal. A game against Real Kashmir might just be the best way to maintain a scoring habit and also lay a marker for the title.
In Sunday’s matches, winless and desperate Namdhari FC will host unbeaten and all-Indian Aizawl FC, fresh from a crucial away point against Gokulam Kerala FC. Equally itching for a win are Shillong Lajong FC, who, despite putting on a good show in the draw against Inter Kashi, were left wanting for more and will finally hope to treat their fans to the first win of the season when they take on Rajasthan United FC. The Desert Warriors suffered a heartbreaking late defeat to Sreenidi Deccan and are looking for consistency so as to not spend another season in the lower rungs of the table.
Round 4 wraps up with Sreenidi Deccan, buoyed by their back-to-back wins, which has lifted them to fourth place, take on Delhi FC at the Deccan Arena. The calendar doesn’t seem to get any easier for Yan Law’s side, who were again outplayed by Real Kashmir in Srinagar and have now travelled to Hyderabad to take on an in-form Sreenidi Deccan.
Law’s priority will be to tighten his defence, who have conceded seven, the most in the league so far. But keeping a clean sheet at the Deccan Arena will mean creating history as Sreenidi Deccan have never failed to score in any home fixture in the I-League, since they began hosting games in the 2022-23 season. (ANI)
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