The last Indian Super League matchweek of 2024 has thrown up some spectacular results: Mohun Bagan doing Mohun Bagan things as they prance along handsomely at the top, Bengaluru FC are somehow still keeping pace with the league leaders, but for Mumbai City and Kerala Blasters, it is now a hope that 2025 comes with better than what the back-half of 2024 has had to offer them.
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We muse, on ISL's matchweek 14:
Can anyone stop Mohun Bagan?
No, seriously, even if someone were to, how would they do it? What are Bagan's weaknesses? Where can you exploit this team? Score early and sit back? Try and keep Jamie Maclaren, Dimi Petratos and Jason Cummings quiet then. Punjab nearly succeeded. They didn't quite account for Alberto Rodriguez.
The centre-back scored twice after Pulga Vidal was sent off, as Bagan turned 0-1 into 3-1, and another three points on the road. Let's be real, with the investments made into the squad and the depth it has, this is only par for the course, as far as Bagan are concerned. Will 2025 throw up any surprises?
Bengaluru's attacking might compensates for defensive fragility
Gerard Zaragoza has a problem with this Bengaluru side, and quite literally it's a big one - Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. He once again made a grave error to concede a goal, after dropping a header from Lalrinliana Hnamte to let Chennaiyin FC back into the game.
Thankfully for Zaragoza and Gurpreet, Bengaluru also have a fearsome attack - led by Ryan Williams and Sunil Chhetri. Imagine Jorge Pereyra Diaz being a support act. That is why Bengaluru are just about keeping pace with Bagan, just two points behind the league leaders, after a 4-2 win over Chennaiyin FC. Bengaluru have now conceded 17 in their last 7 games, but they've also scored 20 in that period.
The Blasters crisis goes on
And there's no Mikael Stahre to blame anymore. So where do the Blasters turn? That win against Mohammedan was always going to be glossed over because tougher tests would come. They failed at the first of those, going down 1-0 with an insipid performance in Jamshedpur.
Yes, they didn't have Jesus Jimenez, whose goals have meant so much to them this season. Once again, that meant a lot of burden on Noah Sadaoui, and when that happens, he begins to become a lot more individualistic, taking shots from impossible angles, looking to dribble past a player too many. Never a good sign, that.
The fragility that cost Stahre his job still remains with the Blasters, and that will cause this season to finish in disaster, unless they conjure up a miracle, like Simon Grayson and Bengaluru did in 2022-23.
NorthEast mix style and substance
Early goal. Alaaeddine Ajaraie goal. Tick. NorthEast United do that always. The test began after that in Mumbai. Juan Benali's men emphatically passed it. Far too often this season, they have started like a house on fire only to dip away in the second half. Against Mumbai City, it was a full 90-minute performance. Even Ajaraie missing a penalty midway through the first half didn't really stop their momentum.
Eventually, in the last ten minutes of the game, they found another goal from Ajaraie and one more from Macarton Nickson. The Moroccan has now scored 14 this season. There are 11 games left to play this season. No player has ever scored more than 18 in a single season. The odds can't be smaller for Ajaraie beating that record.
Odisha don't look like a Lobera team
Mohammedan Sporting have quickly become the league's whipping boys. So, when Sergio Lobera's Odisha FC went to Kolkata, only one result was expected - a similar one to Odisha's thrashing of Hyderabad earlier this season. What transpired was quite the opposite. Odisha finished with zero shots on target. Ignominous.
This isn't looking like a Lobera side. There are still flashes of brilliance from Hugo Boumous and Ahmed Jahouh, but the latter, especially, is finally beginning to look his age on the field. Odisha have become slow, ponderous, and heavily dependent on Diego Mauricio producing moments of brilliance in the final third. It's been seven years since Lobera first arrived on these shores, and for the first time in those seven years, his team doesn't look like a cohesive unit capable of playing brisk, imaginative attacking football.
Where do Mumbai City go from here?
When Petr Kratky won Mumbai City the ISL cup back in May, who could've predicted that they'd end the year with sections of their fanbase now questioning his position? Well, Mumbai have regressed in every sense. It's the first time in seven seasons that they've scored less than 20 goals in their first 13 games. But now they've also developed fragility.
Kratky might have thought he had fixed it, after four clean sheets in succession following the 3-0 defeat to Punjab at home last month. But after another 3-0 home defeat, the questions surrounding him are growing louder. He hasn't been helped by underperformance of key foreigners.
Alberto Noguera and Pereyra Diaz were key components of the side that won the league last season - and now Jon Toral and Nikos Karelis have replaced them. Even though the latter has managed a few goals, their influence as a pair has come nowhere near what Noguera and Pereyra Diaz provided them.
Now couple that with having your premier right-back suspended while having to face the most in-form winger in the league, so you have to put a youngster (Hardik Bhatt) in for his first ISL game in two years. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong for Kratky and Mumbai City.