Tata Steel successfully bids for the Jamshedpur team of ISL

MUMBAI: Indian steelmaker Tata Steel has successfully bid for the upcoming season of football championship Indian Super League ( ISL) with Jamshedpur as the host city.

The names of the members along with the names of coaching staff and squad will be announced in due course.

The Football Sports Development Limited (FSDL), which organises the ISL had invited bids for 10 cities in India, namely Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Cuttack, Durgapur, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur, Kolkata, Ranchi, Siliguri and Thiruvananthapuram.

The team sponsored by Tata Steel will be competing for the title against franchisees from Kolkata, Chennai, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kochi, Goa and Guwahati.

“This is a momentous occasion for Tata Steel, which has always been a pioneer in the development of sports in the country, especially football. Our entry into the coveted Indian Super League reinforces our commitment to provide a fillip to the development of football in the country. We are extremely excited to have won the bid for our hometown Jamshedpur and will provide the best of facilities for football to prosper in the eastern part of our country,” Sunil Bhaskaran, Vice-President of Corporate Services, Tata Steel, said in a release.

The Tata Football Academy that was established in Jamshedpur in 1987 has trained more than 200 budding football players, out of whom 135 have represented the country, with 19 of them having led the national team as Captain across various age groups. The company aims at leveraging the infrastructure of the TFA for the ISL team.

Former Olympian Chuni Goswami who is also the captain of the football team said, “Tatas have always been promoters of sports and have contributed a great deal to the cause of sports, be it football, hockey, athletics, etc, at an all-India level. TFA is a first-of-its-kind institution that was set up to groom budding footballers so that they can evolve into good footballers in course of time. I have been very lucky to be associated with TFA since its inception. I am very happy to know that Tatas continue to promote sports in a big way. It is only natural that Tatas are getting associated with ISL.”