Churchill Brothers will not be playing in the Indian Super League this season.
Now, you may think that's a strange way for a preview to the upcoming season of India's first division to start... but there's a reason why this is pertinent. For until two days before the league was to be officially kicked off (February 14), we didn't know if there would be 14 teams in it or 15.
The first reports of Churchill wanting in came at the start of this week, and you could ask why they thought they would get in when promotion, currently, is reserved only for the winners of the second division, the I-League -- and since Inter Kashi have already booked that spot, what case do they even have? Well, it all stems largely from Churchill's belief that they did indeed win I-League last year.
You see, Churchill topped the points table at the end of the season, but Inter Kashi were awarded the title after an AIFF disciplinary committee decision (correctly) gave them an extra three points. The AIFF appeals committee overrode this, and the AIFF provisionally gave the title to Churchill. Inter Kashi went to the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Switzerland and got that reversed again. Churchill never accepted this, which meant they didn't really hand over the trophy provisionally given to them, and AIFF were forced to create a replica for Inter Kashi.
A full season of football, two internal committees, the highest court of arbitration in world sport and two teams who fully believe they have won the league, and with it, the right to play in the ISL.
You could read all that and ask, 'eh?' but we suggest you smile, nod along and accept the one immutable fact of Indian football: Here, we don't just embrace the absurd, Mr Camus, we revel in it.
Which is why no eyebrows ought to be raised that the 2025-26 season is starting mid-February 2026. Or that it took the union minister of sport basically sitting everyone down and giving them a direct order (more or less) to get it going in the place; and that only happened reportedly because of the government's worry about how all this chaos would affect their bidding for the 2036 Olympics.
So why wouldn't it be all but natural that a ten-year-old commercial contract was allowed to run into its last year without negotiations starting on renewal. Or that until a few months before the expiry of said contract, methods to get alternates on board weren't even discussed. And that everyone was fighting over the definition of red tape in court while footballers and everyone associated with national level football in the country sat at home wondering when, and if, they would get their day jobs back.
Tremendous sacrifice from all clubs is being asked for to play the ISL in its current format. Repercussions if we don't have a league are very worrying. Would like to take this opportunity to thank the honourable sports minister for his intervention and his proposal. Truly hope...
- Parth Jindal (@ParthJindal11) January 7, 2026
Why should we do anything but laugh at the fact that one of the ISL clubs didn't have a training ground in the week leading up to the start of the league. That one of the most storied clubs in India will be playing their home matches 300 kms due west of their actual home: Mohammedan Sporting will be in Jamshedpur for the season. Or that one of the most well-followed clubs in the land, the Kerala Blasters, weren't sure which city they would be playing out of until about T-5 from the league start date. City, not stadium, mind.
Don't look surprised that the current broadcast deal is -- let us do the math carefully here -- Rs 266.38 Crores less than the previous one, the per-match value for this truncated season translating to Rs 9.5 lakh per match compared to Rs 1.68 Crore last.
So, of course, multi-billionaires would use this panic to claim players lack motivation because they are paid too well. And sure, reports would emerge that clubs were trying to go through the season without a specialist goalkeeping coach, or a strength-and-conditioning coach. What's a muscle strain here or there when we can go back to the India of the 90s?
Now, of course, the financial strain is real: Kerala Blasters said they were seriously considering shutting down, but then again this is a club that ended their women's team because of a fine imposed by the AIFF for walking out of an ISL knockout game. In an ecosystem where those who increased wages of footballers in a wild scramble to get to the top then complain about over-inflated wages, anything goes.
Amidst all this, most players in the league have agreed to play on reduced wages, because some football is better than none. And that's the key here. As everyone tries their best to salvage what is an absolute mess of a season -- shush! There's no need to ask who caused the mess in the first place -- let us all just revel in the fact that there will football at all.
The ISL will be played for the first time in the manner of a proper league (no playoffs, no cup finals), it will have more teams than ever, it will platform more Indian head coaches than ever (four) and with the big money foreigners already having left to Indonesia and the like, a host of young Indians will get a chance to step up and do their thing. You can get a detailed low down on each team, and what to expect from them, right here on these pages.
So, as the now expired slogan of the league goes, 'let's football'.