Nothing about this season is normal, and there's been nothing normal about the pre-season that the ISL teams went through either.
Every player & staff, after strict testing, entered a bio-secure bubble to keep them safe from COVID-19. For more than a month, every single team has been restricted to its own hotel, and they can only leave it to go to their practice ground.
But although the protocol is the same for all teams, the experience they've had in pre-season so far has been far from similar. The primary reason behind this is that the players & staff didn't arrive at the same time.
Mohun Bagan had a head start in this department; they assembled their team in Goa before anyone else. Habas was one of the first head coaches to arrive, as were the foreign players on the Mariners' roster. They were the first to begin their pre-season practice.
Kerala Blasters, however, haven't had it so easy. Their signings took longer to complete and they arrived much later. And although by now they've had many weeks of training, indications are the team is yet to find its best rhythm. They lost to East Bengal 1-3 in a pre-season friendly and the descriptions of their performance painted a picture similar to the way Mohun Bagan performed early on under Vicuna at Durand Cup, CFL and Sheikh Kamal International Club Cup. An extensive pre-season with loads of matches was key to Vicuna's success in I-League and he hasn't had that at KBFC due to the current circumstances, which makes one wonder how long the team might take to reach its optimum output.
It's not as though Mohun Bagan haven't had their own issues, however. Habas had scheduled a friendly with FC Goa, then had to cancel it due to floodlight issues at the practice ground. He has also complained about not having adequate time to prepare in a recent interview. So in a way, the current COVID-19 conditions have put both teams in a spot where they're not ready to the extent they want to be. And that adds an extra uncertainty factor to the game, on top of it being the first match of the season for both teams.