Mohd Sporting join SRK, Ganguly in the battle for Kolkata franchisee

 I-League club Mohammedan Sporting are mulling over bidding for the Kolkata franchisee in the much-anticipated IPL-style football tournament scheduled to be held in September-October, a top official said on Tuesday.

Mohammedan Sporting President Sultan Ahmed told PTI that his club was interested in owning a franchisee in the Indian Super League, to be organised by IMG-Reliance, the commercial partner of the All India Football Federation.

“We are interested in bidding for a franchisee in ISL but we have to look into the details of how we are going to go about it. We will discuss the matter in the club governing council meeting next week,” Ahmed said.Asked if the club would tie up with any corporate entity to bid for the franchisee, he said, “We have to first take a decision in principle that we will bid for a franchisee. After that we will decide the other details.”

Reports are doing the rounds that Bollywood superstar and IPL side Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shah Rukh Khan and former Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly were also interested in bidding for the Kolkata franchisee in the ISL.

Mohammedan Sporting have been playing in the I-League first division on and off for some years. They made the grade this season after finishing on top in the I-League second division.Their performance so far this season has been a mixed one as they won the Durand Cup after a gap of 73 years and also bagged the IFA Shield. In the I-League, they are, however, at the bottom and are fighting to avoid relegation.

The bidding process for the ISL has already started with IMG-Reliance floating a tender through ‘Invitation To Bid’ documents, inviting bids for nine cities across the country from which eight franchises will be finally selected.

The nine cities in the reckoning are Bangalore, Chennai, Dehli, Goa, Guwahati, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune.The deadline for the submission of bid documents by interested parties is March 25 and winning bids will be announced in first week of next month.