Kerala Blasters finally have a win this season, and that too at the home of great rivals Bengaluru FC. Mohun Bagan have Mohun Bagan-ed their way to another win (with a Sergio Lobera twist). Jamshedpur FC and East Bengal are keeping the title race interesting. And two former Blasters employees are making SC Delhi a fun, fun watch.
We muse on the week gone by in ISL 2025-26 (The fact that we have to add the '2025' there for technical reasons is so tragi-comic):
Jamshedpur keep the title race tight
An attacker squeezes a goal in. Phurba Lachenpa gifts the opposition chances and they keep missing. When the opposition creates chances on their own, Lachenpa pulls off brilliant saves.
While it was Brandon Fernandes against Jamshedpur, it's usually been Lallianzuala Chhangte -- but the Mumbai City blueprint this season has been constant. All five of their wins this season have come with one goal margins, four of them 1-0. It's got them leading the league, but the thing with one-goal margins is that it takes but one fightback to turn three points into one.
And if there's one team that loves a late scrap, it's Owen Coyle's Jamshedpur FC. Against East Bengal, Rei Tachikawa scored an 87th-minute winner, against SC Delhi it was an 89th minute Nikola Stojanovic equaliser and against Mohun Bagan, Ritwik Das stole a point in the 95th. So, when Sarthak Golui rose high in the 92nd minute to smash a header into a Mumbai goal that had, until then, led a charmed life -- no one ought to have been surprised. This is just what they do.
That equaliser means Mumbai have been reeled back, now just a point ahead of Bagan as they remain only three ahead of Jamshedpur. The title race is very much on, and if Jamshedpur's late heroics are any indication, it will go down to the wire.
The two faces of Kerala Blasters
David Catala (ex-head coach, KBFC), in a recent interview with Field Vision opened a whole new can of worms by saying: "The foreign players that came here came with zero salary. They are not earning [anything]. With a lower profile of players, the players didn't receive or didn't get salaries. This was the situation of the club."
The interview comes a month after a fan club meeting with Blasters management in which the club's director Nikhil Nimmagadda reportedly said that if they operated in a business minded, they would have opted for a 'no foreign player policy' to keep budgets low. But they never did because the 'team is not run' in that manner.
The conflict in these statements is obvious, and underline better than anything the hard division that has formed between the team's management and one of the most passionate fan bases in the land.
Will Westwood get the Blasters fans back in?
A season that started with the chaos of not knowing where they would play, then getting locked out of their traditional home ground has been as rough off the field as it has been on it... and due to the aforementioned division, the Manjappada [Yellow Army], the biggest official fan organisation of the club, called for boycotts of their matches earlier this month. And that's why a Kanteerava stadium that is usually overflowing in yellow when the Blasters come visiting saw only a handful of the away faithful witness their first ever win on the soil of their biggest rival.
"We made history." ��
We caught up with Victor Bertomeu and Danish Farooq at the sound of the final whistle at Kanteerava in #BFCKBFC. ��️#ISL12 | @KeralaBlasters pic.twitter.com/lxudS3pm11
- Indian Super League (@IndSuperLeague) April 12, 2026
It was scrappy, against 10-men and came because of a goalkeeping error -- but a win is a win, and they finally have it in this horror season. The fact that it happened in Bengaluru pleased new coach Ashley Westwood no end, and he used the result as a rallying cry to ask fans to back him and his players, and to come to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium come April 18.
With the boycott aimed at the suits rather than the players or coaching staff, though, it's a painful call to make for the fans. And that means remains to be seen if Westwood's call will be heeded.
Tchorz + Aimen make Delhi... fun
Two former Kerala Blasters men, meanwhile, have flipped the script up north. After going to ground in Hyderabad and relocating to Delhi with a very young squad and a manager who'd previously been the Blasters reserves coach, not much was expected of SC Delhi this season, but Tomasz Tchorz has dragged the team into a comfortable mid-table position, and he's done it playing some of the most fun football in the league.
Against NorthEast United -- who started the season quite well (remember that Rinzuala finish in Bengaluru?) and have faded badly -- Delhi ran riot. And they were inspired by Aimen (floating around as he pleased, wreaking havoc everywhere he went) and Kerala youngster Joseph Sunny (clinical in front of goal).
Sunny scored twice (one assisted brilliantly by Aimen) and turned provider for Aimen to wrap it up with a thunderous finish. Tchorz has got the best of what's a limited squad on paper by playing to the strengths of his players -- quick passing, lots of wing play and running in behind, trusting the dribblers, having balls played to feet rather than thumping it in the air -- and by making sure play flows through his best player. And it's making for quite the fun watch.
P.S. Every time you see a mid-table club play well, the mind wanders back to a point Sunaadh Sagar made in our last musings: "The lack of playoffs will be felt"
Sergio Lobera did say he preferred 5-4 over 1-0
When he took the ISL by storm as FC Goa coach all those years ago, Sergio Lobera was obstinate in saying he'd much rather his team won 5-4 than 1-0. It's a philosophy he's now imprinted on the one team in the country that in its modern iteration always seemed to fancy the 1-0 over anything else.
After all, in the ISL era, Mohun Bagan have found success under Antonio Habas and Jose Molina by simply grinding their way to win after win, but this season, they do it oh, so differently.
On Sunday, Lobera's Bagan overwhelmed Punjab by sheer heft of attacking talent. Altering an already attacking formation, he threw all that offensive might at them (Deepak Tangri off for Sahal Abdul Samad, for instance). It left them hopelessly open defensively (Punjab took 20 shots to Bagan's 12 and had 1.51 xG to their 0.4) ... but the quality at the other end eventually paid off. Samad scored with a blinder in the 74th minute to equalise at 2-2 and fellow sub Jason Cummings won it in the 91st.
East Bengal's incessant attacking keeps them in the race
The only team more attack-minded than Bagan this season? Their great rivals, East Bengal.
Check out their stats from the 3-1 win over a misfiring Chennaiyin: 2.44 xG vs 0.73, 22 shots vs 12, 11 on target vs 2, 30 touches in the opposition box vs 19. Their ability to keep moving forward was on sharp display in Chennai, where the home side missed presentable chances of their own, but eventually caved under the weight of East Bengal's incessant bombardment of their goal.
The visitors were profligate too (PV Vishnu could, and should, have had a brace) but they create so much, so constantly, that it was impossible to keep them at bay. They're four points behind the leaders Mumbai, and three behind Bagan... but they do have a game in hand. That title race could get really, really interesting.
Where will Mohammadan Sporting get a point from?
Every club (almost) has suffered a great deal due to the chaos that preceded the start of this ISL season -- but none have been harder hit than that other great Calcutta institution, Mohammadan Sporting. The only ISL side without a foreigner and with their domestic players being largely unproven youngsters, Mehrajuddin Wadoo was handed an impossible task at the start of the season, and halfway through it remains as un-doable as ever.
They've shown glimpses of potential and promise (they could have got late draws vs Bengaluru earlier this season, and Inter Kashi on Saturday, for instance) but their record of seven games, seven losses, three goals scored and twenty conceded speaks for itself.
With every other team now having at least one win notched up, they need something to go their way soon or face the prospect of dropping back into the second division. There's always hope, but the immediate future of this proud club looks quite bleak.