Kolkata franchise announces its team in this month

Kolkata franchise has unveiled and announced its team on July 7. The Kolkata team is the first one to have been christened among all the other teams. With their team partner Atletico Madrid, the other partners are finalising the deal with a top European player or manager to fill up the two top positions. The team had put their best effort to pull in two of the top seven international players to play before June 30 deadline of selecting the marquee players. The inaugural ceremony of the team had taken place in the presence of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Champions League winner Luis Garcia has been declared as the marquee player for the Kolkata franchise. Garcia is the former Spanish star who has announced his retirement earlier this year after spending two seasons playing in Mexico, but he has confirmed his participation in the Indian Super League (ISL) in his twitter account. On the other hand, retired Spanish defender Antonio Lopez Habas has been announced as the coach of the Kolkata. The state government has extended their full support to ISL franchise in building the right infrastructure which will be of international standards. Vivekananda Yuba BharatiKrirangan will be the home venue.

The teams participating in Indian Super League (ISL) are gearing in enthusiasm as the league is around the corner. The league is about to open in September and will feature eight franchisees and has been the brainchild of All India Football Federation (AIFF). The tournament has its marketing partner IMG – Reliance. Each team is allowed to have one marquee player and FA Licenced agent BaljitRihal of Inventive Sports Garcia’s arrival will surely begin an exciting era in India’s football history. It has also been announced that there could be a Manchester United and Arsenal flavour in this season as Michael Silvestre is part of the central pool of marquee players.

The hoopla of Indian Super League has also taken a step ahead with the strategic partnership which has been signed with English Premier League (EPL). AIFF President Praful Patel is affirmative at this venture as he believes that this is going to be an outstanding opportunity to initiate best practices in the teams. He also continued that with this alliance, ISL is going to set a strong commercial platform for Indian Football and will open viable avenues to incorporate more and more international exposure to the team.

Unlike IPL 20-20 which has an auction system, the ISL will follow ‘Players Draft System’ adopting the Major League Soccer format as the remaining players will come from the IMG – Reliance pool. An ISL official said, “We’ll have about 60 foreign players and more than 112 domestic players in our pool for the Players Draft System.” With Praful Patel contributions, AIFF has turned the table of Indian Football by engaging the players in such a remarkable event which will definitely going to create a roadmap for the sports to touch an international horizon.