The 14th edition I-League to start on 9th of January, 2021

XtraTime Web Desk – The 2020-21 edition of I-League is scheduled to kick-off on 9th of January, 2021. Due to the Covid-19 situation, entire tournament will take place in West Bengal.

Eleven teams will be participating in this year’s I-League and it’s mandatory for all the players, support staff and others to enter the bio-bubble 14 days prior of the their first match. The schedule has not been announced as of now but 1sports will officially telecast all the live matches of this year’s I-League.

Interestingly, a new format has been designed for this year’s I-League. This time, all the teams will face each other in the first leg and then they’ll be divided into two groups. The top six teams of the league will be in one group while the bottom five in a second group. The top six teams will play each other to decide the winner while the bottom teams will just play each other in one-leg format. The team with maximum number of points will be crowned as the Champions of I-League in the 2020-21 season.

On the other hand, after successfully hosting the I-League qualifiers, West Bengal is yet again in-charge of hosting the second biggest football competition of India. Sunando Dhar, the CEO of AIFF on Saturday said, “We can’t thank Government of West Bengal and IFA enough for their unconditional support to hosting the Hero I-League Qualifier this year. Without their support, we couldn’t even think of hosting the tournament smoothly”. He added, “Hero I-League Qualifier was a stage rehearsal for the next edition of Hero I-League as it’ll be a longer and more challenging tournament from every single aspect. We’ll work with them hand in hand to make it a grand success and we’re confident to pull it off successfully”.