The 14th edition of the I-League will kick-off on January 9 next year in Kolkata.
Eleven teams will need to enter the bio-secure bubble 14 days prior to their first match according to the schedule, which will be announced shortly.
Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the previous edition of the I-League made to halt abruptly before the football action resumed once again in India through I-League Qualifier 2020 in October this year.
The government of the West Bengal and the Indian Football Association (IFA) joined hands with the All India Football Federation to orgse the qualifiers successfully.
"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," AIFF quoted Sunando Dhar, CEO, Leagues as saying.
"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," he added.
All 11 teams will face each other once in the first leg of the league before they are divided into two different groups.
The top six teams, according to the points table, will face each other once again to decide the winner whereas the other five teams will play against each other in a one-leg league format.
The team with maximum points (cumulative points collected from all 15 matches) will be the winner of Hero I-League 2020-21.
The entire tournament will be hosted adhering to the COVID-19 SOPs released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and no spectator will be allowed inside a stadium during a match.
( With inputs from ANI )
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