Shillong, Sept 15: Defending Durand Cup winners NorthEast United FC will start their Indian Super League (ISL) 2024-25 campaign by playing against the newly-promoted Mohammedan SC at the Kishore Bharati Krirangan in Kolkata on Monday evening.

Mohammedan SC won the I-League 2023-24 campaign to earn their place in the ISL, whereas the Highlanders had finished the previous season in the top-tier at the seventh spot.

“We want to absorb the ISL experience”

Mohammedan SC head coach Andrey Chernyshov is not putting exceeding expectations on his players right now. He instead wants them to take a feel of the league, embrace a fighting spirit, and improve as they move ahead in the year.

“First, we need to make a strong team for the ISL. We understand how strong this competition is. We will be playing against many good Indian and foreign players. We need to take this feeling from the ISL, the experience, and we need to fight in every match, show good football for the people, and this is the most important, which inspires us to do very well in every match,” Chernoshyv said.

“Durand Cup win is history”

The Highlanders are fresh from the glory of bagging the first silverware in the club’s history. However, head coach Juan Pedro Benali is looking beyond that to deliver a successful ISL season.

Having missed the playoffs qualification by a whisker in 2023-24, they are sure to leave no stone unturned in the coming term.

“The feeling of winning the Durand Cup was great, but it finishes 24 hours later. We cannot live with it anymore if we want to move forward. We need to forget that. It’s great for the paper and the stats, but we just need to think about the next game,” Benali said.

“We have our own mentality. We take every game as the finale. We are playing against a strong team, a good coach, in a very good stadium, with great fans, so we need to be smart, cool, and calm in our approach,” he added.

Key Players 

Both NorthEast United FC and Mohammedan SC have promising Indian players in their squad.

Parthib Gogoi was the breakout star for the Highlanders in ISL 2023-24, scoring five goals and recording four assists in 17 league appearances. With a 26.32% goal conversion rate and 39 touches in the opposition’s box, Gogoi will be eager to double down on his output this season.

Mohammedan SC will have high hopes from ex-Hyderabad FC star Makan Chothe, who has recorded a 60% dribble success rate (21 out of 35) in the competition since the start of 2024.

It is the highest by any Indian player to have attempted more than 20 dribbles during this period and the third highest among all players in this category (Carlos Martinez – 63% and Alberto Noguera – 61.5%).

Benali is backing Indian youngsters across clubs to aim higher and achieve their goals in ISL 2024-25. “There is a very good quality of Indian players in the ISL. We all need to work towards helping them look higher all the time. The sky’s the limit and they should not stop (progressing),” he mentioned.

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