After nearly 10 weeks of exciting action featuring 60 scintillating encounters, a mouth-watering clash between Atletico de Kolkata and Kerala Blasters promises to provide the perfectly high-voltage finale to the inaugural Indian Super league football tournament here on Saturday.
A dash of cricketing flavour has been added to the contest given that Kerala are co-owned by Sachin Tendulkar and ATK are co-owned by Sourav Ganguly. The two icons are expected to cheer their respective teams from the stands, along with what is expected to be, a sell-out crowd.
Ironically, Saturday's finalists finished third and fourth in the league stage and the teams who were knocked out in the semi-finals were top finishers Chennaiyin FC and FC Goa. Despite being finalists, both Blasters and ATK have had contrasting league rounds and semi-final matches.
Blasters struggled in the initial few games and from being the bottom placed, they bounced back and started peaking at the end of the tournament.
They outclassed the league toppers Chennaiyin FC in the first semi-final match and got the much-needed goal in the extra time of the second leg to beat the leaders 4-3 on aggregate and book a spot in the final.
On the other hand, ATK endured a drop in form after some initial blitz. They were the league leaders in first few weeks but lost the plot and managed to scrape through to the semi-finals and the final. The Eastern outfit seems to have lost its initial rhythm and even against FC Goa, they drew a blank, managing to qualify for the finals on the basis of penalties.
Fikru ruled out
ATK's main striker Fikru Teferra, who was suffering from a hamstring tear, has been ruled out from the final.
The Ethiopian striker has been released by the Kolkata franchise as he's heading to South Africa to treat the grade 1 tear in his hamstring “Fikru's injury would have kept him out of the all important final... We decided to release him ahead of the title clash to enable his speedy recovery,” team co-owner Utsav Parekh
stated.