Lack of goals and a team in flux marked Bengaluru FC’s dismal ISL campaign

Bengaluru FC struggles with lack of leadership, poor performance, and player integration in disappointing Indian Super League season.

Back in December, after Bengaluru FC’s 0-4 shellacking at the hands of Mumbai City FC, the then head coach Simon Grayson had said that he saw no leaders on the pitch.

Four months on, the man who took over from Grayson following that harrowing night, Gerard Zaragoza, sang the same tune, after an identical thrashing by Mohun Bagan Super Giant on Thursday.

It was a bold assessment of a side with two Indian National team stalwarts in Sunil Chhetri and Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. But as the twin defeats — two of their heaviest at home — showed, there was more than a kernel of truth in it.

The campaign was BFC’s worst in Indian Super League history — 22 points from 22 matches — and the outfit didn’t win a single away fixture.

That it came barely 12 months after the club was back challenging for the biggest prizes in Indian football made it more disappointing. It was a penalty shoot-out away from regaining the ISL title last season and then finished runner-up in the Super Cup.

Grayson first, and then Zaragoza, may have bemoaned the lack of leaders, but the drift has been palpable for a while.

After nearly eight years with just three full-time head coaches, Zaragoza is the team’s third in the last three years. And against superior opponents like MCFC and Mohun Bagan, the feeling of being out-coached and out-thought was unmistakable.