OVER THE COURSE of 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon, the ISL franchises came together to sit down and call out names from a list; and that was enough to build more than half their teams for the upcoming season.
But it wasn't all that easy. Indian players will be higher in number in ISL 2017-18, and hence more crucial to a team's success. Which is why it was a tricky prospect to have them in a Draft; because teams could miss out on players crucial to them, and they would have little chance to win him back because the player himself has no power of negotiation or right to choose one team over the other.
There was a limited provision of "instant trade" where a team wishing to take a player claimed by another team would have all but 3 minutes to strike a deal... and given how in world football transfer negotiations often take weeks and even months, this is a sorry excuse of an opportunity. As a result, even though many teams tried to initiate trades, there wasn't a single successful deal made.
All the teams came in looking to have most of their Indian roster secured and they had varying degrees of success with it. Here's a full list of who was signed by which team, with the names of players they retained from last season for reference regarding how the ISL Indian contingents look like.