There are a few interesting tid-bits and ‘where are they nows’ coming out of the ISL, but it’s not really worthy of discussion in the Aussies Abroad or Where Are They Now threads.
A quick recap:
Tim Cahill is playing for Jamshedpur, a small town in Jharkand that’s not even a real town. It’s the home of Indian manufacturing giant Tata, and Tata owns most of the land, controls all the development and infrastructure, and provides (to the extent they are provided) all civic services. Needless to say, Tata also owns the football team.
Josip Gombau is coach of Delhi Dynamos, and was on billboards all over the city when I was there last week. Andrija Kaluderovic leads the line for Alessandro Del Piero’s former club, which has four points from seven games.
Crazy that Gombau is coaching in the ISL. There was such hype about him when he was at Adelaide (after coming from within Barca), he then went on to coach in the US youth structure, then Australia youth system (u23 I think) then assistant coach to Ange, then back in the A League with WSW. WSW and ISL seem like a backward step, but there’s probably a fair bit of coin in a coaching gig in the ISL I guess?
I would have updated this thread but nothing has happened that’s been of any interest to our Australian audience.
Gombau’s Delhi has lost another three games since the first post, and now has 4 points from 10 games. Cahill has one goal from eight matches. Kaludjerovic has one from ten. Bartholemew Ogbeche is carving up the league for Northeast United and Coro doing similar things for Goa, but they’re in second and third behind Eric Paartalu’s unbeaten Bengaluru FC.
I don’t know if he played in the ISL or just in the national league (he played for all three of the big kolkata teams), but he came back home a year or two ago and may have even turned out in the NPL.
Pretty sure Tolgay Ozbey got a pretty big deal in the first year of the ISL but after that I haven’t heard much. Can’t be bothered watching the competition 99% of the time and his Wiki page isn’t exactly up to date.
That was in the I-League, not the Superannuation League, but doesn’t matter as he recently terminated his contract anyways. Guessing he joins the long list of Aussies in Asian leagues who didn’t get paid.
This garbage is still running, just popped up on my Kayo, so time for the annual round of “WTF are they doing THERE?”.
Gombau remarkably still has a job after leading Delhi to the heady heights of 8th last season. Only they’ve now moved from Delhi to Bhubaneshwar, respective populations of ~11M to ~800K, and rebranded themselves as Odisha FC. Seems like the club have made a move perfectly mirroring the trajectory of their coach’s career.
Atletico de Kolkata, still the most ridiculously named club in world football, are probably of most interest to us. They have Roy Krishna, David Williams and Dario Vidosic all on their books.
Bengaluru have Erik Paartalu and former WSW Dimas Delgado. Chennaiyin have Lucian Goian who was at Perth under Kenny Lowe for about 5 minutes. Oh yeah, and our boy Bobo is at new club Hyderabad (they’ve replaced the defunct Pune City), along with Matt Kilgallon who I recall played at Leeds way back when they were still relevant.
Probably the biggest name in the entire comp is Asamoah Gyan, nearly 34 now, and has landed at North East United after 2 bog average seasons at Kayserispor in Turkey. He’s it, so that’s a far cry from the first year or two where every team had some names.
Kind of, but there’s much more interest in football in that Eastern region. Also they won’t have to deal with Delhi’s pollution, which isn’t really compatible with professional (or any) sport.
Then again Odisha is so far off the beaten track I’d be surprised if any more than about one in a thousand visitors to India ever made it there.
