The Indian Super League had an interesting look when it first started up back in 2014 by IMG–Reliance, Star Sports, and the All India Football Federation who teamed up to set up a new top flight Indian football league.
Certain companies, including La Liga side Atletico Madrid and Bollywood stars big for teams who represented selected cities/states in India.
Atletico announced their team first which was Atletico de Kolkata with their marquee singing being former Atletico player Luis Garcia.
Each team were appointed a marquee signing that featured many big names in football and some even came out of retirement to do so: Garcia with Atletico de Kolkata, Elano with Chennai, Alessandro del Piero with Delhi Dynamos, Robert Pires with Goa, David James with Kerala Blasters, Freddie Ljunberg with Mumbai City, Joan Capdevila and David Trezeguet with Pune City.
Some massive, but ageing stars (even seven years ago) signed up to get the Indian Super League up and running. Many other players signed up including Nicolas Anelka and Iain Hume.
The league was set up a lot like the MLS with a draft being used to assign players for each team and the top four going on to compete in the playoffs to see who would become champion.
Atletico de Kolkata would go on to win the inaugural ISL season after Mohamed Rafique scored in the 95th minute against Kerala Blasters to win the game.
The Indian Super League is still going to this day with an impressive roster of marquee players each season.
In 2017 the league went through some changes creating rules on how many foreign players could feature and going away with a set marquee player.
This made the league more competitive as there wasn't a 'star' in each team and allowed for well rounded teams to be made around Indian players.
In 2019/20 thanks to the changes in the league and their attempts to make it somewhat more professional - the winners of the league would now qualify for the AFC Champions League.
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