JOIN USStar striker Sunil Chhetri spearheads the list of players who are set to go under the auctioner’s hammer at the first “Player Auction” of the Indian Super League Football, which is scheduled here on Friday.
The 30-year-old four-time AIFF Player of the Year and the highest goal-scorer for the country commands the highest base price set for the day at Rs 80 lakh and is among 10 Indian players set to feature in the auction ahead of the October 3-December 6 Season 2 of the tournament.
Other than Chhetri, who is expected to trigger an intense bidding war among the eight franchises are: Karanjeet Singh (base price Rs 60 lakh), Anas Edathodika, Arata Izumi, Robin Singh (all commanding base price of Rs 40 lakh), Thoi Singh (Rs 39 lakh), Eugeneson Lyngdoh (Rs 27.50 lakh), Jackichand Singh, Seityasen Singh (both Rs 20 lakh) and Rino Anto (Rs 17.50 lakh).
All these players, who had missed on the inaugural season of the tournament last year owning to their individual contracts with respective I-League clubs, have shown keen interest to be part of the League’s Season 2.
Six of these ten players — Chhetri, Robin Singh, Thoi Singh, Izumi, Edathodika and Karanjeet — have signed with Football Sports Development Limited, the promoters of Hero ISL, as free agents.
Jackichand Singh and Seityasen Singh have been loaned from I- League club Royal Wahingdoh FC while Rino Anto and Eugeneson Lyngdoh are loaned from Bengaluru FC.
Additionally, an extensive list of 113 Indian players have been made available to eight franchise club owners through the Player Draft, which is also to be held on the same day.
The eight franchises have 64 Indian players on their roster - either retained from last year or signed from the open market. The comprehensive Draft list would help them to fill up a total of 40 positions of the Indian player quota.
A lot many players in the Draft list command base prices which are in excess of Rs 20 lakh. The highest among them are free agents like T Saran Singh (Rs 33 lakh) and Keegan Pereira (Rs 32 lakh) while other in the list are: Gurjinder Kumar (Rs 27 lakh), Augustin Fernandes (Rs 26 lakh), Nicolas Colaco and Gilbert Oliveira (both Rs 23 lakh), all of them on loan from Salgaocar, and free agents Beevan D’Mello (Rs 24 lakh) and Zakeer Mundampara (Rs 23 lakh).