page_title: I-League
section_title: Head coaches
hierarchical_section_title: I-League / Head coaches
caption_attribution_description: English: Zico is lota Bengal tent
context_page_description: The I-League, formerly known as National Football League, is the joint-premier football league in India, together with the Indian Super League. For sponsorship reasons, the league is officially known as the Hero I-League. It is currently contested by 11 clubs across the country.
  The competition was founded in 2007 as the successor to the National Football League and competition commenced in November 2007. The league was launched as India's first ever professional football league and with the aim to increase the player pool for India's national team. Unlike the franchise based Indian Super League, the I-League operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the I-League 2nd Division. For the clubs that become I-League champions, they are granted the opportunity to participate in the AFC Cup, Asia's secondary international club competition.
  Since the inception of the I-League, a total of seven clubs have been crowned champions. Dempo have won the most titles in league history, being crowned champions three times. Churchill Brothers, Mohun Bagan and Bengaluru have won the league twice. Salgaocar, Aizawl, Minerva Punjab, and Chennai City have won it once.
context_section_description: The role of the head coach in the I-League varies from club to club. Some clubs in the I-League like to appoint technical directors as well as head coaches and the technical directors for the most part are given the power the select the squad and sometimes the entire team management. The All India Football Federation does impose licensing requirements for head coaches in the I-League, the rule being that the head coach must have an AFC A-License in order to coach in the I-League, however, some clubs and coaches like Subhash Bhowmick, Subrata Bhattacharya, Sukhwinder Singh, and Bimal Ghosh are known for accepting a technical directors role in order to bypass the head coaching requirements without an A-License. This has bought about a lot of controversial news in the I-League, most recently being when Churchill Brothers won the I-League after the 2012–13 season with Subhash Bhowmick running the entire team on and off the field but not winning the "Coach of the Year" award due to being listed as the technical director and not the head coach.
  Seeing this, the AIFF technical director, Rob Baan, as well as others, advocated that the federation make it mandatory for both technical directors and head coaches to have an AFC A-License. On 14 May 2014 this was officially put into act by the AIFF during their I-League licensing committee meeting.
  In terms of coaching performance, after the first seven seasons of the I-League, an Indian head coach has won the I-League four times while a foreign head coach has won it three times. Zoran Đorđević of Serbia was the first ever foreign head coach to win the I-League while the second coach was Karim Bencherifa of Morocco. Englishman Ashley Westwood was the most recent foreign coach to win the I-League in the 2014–15 season.
  Armando Colaco was the first Indian coach to win the I-League in the league's opening season and he has the most I-League championships at three. Mariano Dias and Khalid Jamil the only other Indian coach to win the I-League.
  The current head coaches in the I-League are:
caption: Former Dempo manager Armando Colaco was the longest serving and most successful manager in the history of the I League.
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