ISL | It's 'Christmas morning' for Bengaluru FC players

Bengaluru: It's hard to ignore the irony when Bengaluru FC's Ryan Williams says: "It would be like Christmas morning for us" ahead of their 2025-26 ISL season opener against Delhi SC.

After all, it has been more than three moons since Bengaluru FC played their last official game -- 102 days to be precise when the top-tier Indian football side made its group-stage exit at the AIFF Super Cup.

As far as their last Indian Super League match is concerned, it's 308 days since the Blues had the ISL final heartbreak at the hands of Mohun Bagan Super Giants on a sultry evening in Kolkata. 

If this were to be a normal '2025-26 season' of Indian football, BFC could have been fighting for the title and would have been entering the fag end of the season by this time with the difference in title contenders and pretenders as clear as daylight. 

But we are not in a normal season, after all. We, instead, are in a 91-match truncated ISL, which has stepped into a new reality. Where the year '2025' only represents for all the drama that took place off the field before the Sports Ministry had to step in and force AIFF and clubs to finalise a date. 

That wasn't enough to solve the problems of Indian football. As BFC gear up to play their ISL opener at their home Sree Kanteerava Stadium against a repackaged Hyderabad FC in their new avatar as Delhi SC, the top-tier Indian football is poorer than its preceding season with a heavy drop in commercial rights and no title sponsor.

While the tournament has kicked off, one can feel pity in abundance for the clubs as some of them are yet to find a home stadium, some have lost major investors and have taken desperate decisions of players' pay cut with some also not having the money to field any foreign players. 

That's true for BFC's Sunday rivals Delhi SC.  The Tomasz Tchorz's side bears a similar too-young look from their Nizams' days. Lacking the budget to land any foreign players, they will rely on Kerala's twin brother Aimen and Azhar to find some finesse in attack. 

It's not much different for Renedy Singh-helmed side, who have just two foreign players -- Argentinian Braian Sanchez and Uzbek Sirojiddin Kuziev -- while the star European performers such as Alberto Noguera, Edgar Mendez, Aleksandar Jovanovic among others have left.

Coach Renedy, who became the club's first Indian manager after taking over from Spanish gaffer Gerald Zaragoza last November, will be relying on some of the old guards of the clubs, goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu and defender Rahul Bheke to keep the defense in shape with depth remaining a concern.

40-year-old Sunil Chhetri, who is likely playing his last season, will be looking to prove everyone wrong again while Ryan, who will feature as a domestic player in ISL for the first time after adopting Indian nationality last year, will be expected to more than the eight goals he scored last season. 

The big positive from the transfer window was the signing of technically gifted winger Ashique Kuruniyan from Mohun Bagan as the India international add depths to the attack. While his injury-prone history remains a concern, Ryan and team will like to ignore all of that like they did with the problems of the last few months as it's like a 'Christmas morning' for them after all.