Yellow and Hollow - The Costs of Loving Kerala Blasters

There is a photograph somewhere from the early days of the ISL, not an official one, just something snapped on a phone, of a group of us spilling out of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi, yellow scarves and wide grins, twenty teenagers who had just watched Kerala Blasters play and couldn't quite believe this was their life now. We were schoolkids. The team trained on our school ground. We felt, absurdly and wonderfully, like we were part of it.

That was 2014. The ISL was brand new, Indian football felt like it was on the edge of something, and we showed up in groups of twenty, boys and girls piling into the stadium like it was the most natural thing in the world. Not all my friends were football fans in the traditional sense. Some came for the atmosphere, the energy, the feeling of being part of something bigger. KBFC had a way of pulling you in. We all wore yellow. Kerala has always been a football state, and here was a club that felt like ours, practicing on the same school ground we ran on every day. Two years later, we graduated. KBFC moved to a different training ground. Life moved on.

But the love doesn't really go anywhere, does it?

When I returned to Kochi this season, there was already a heaviness around the club. The league itself had been in limbo for months. Talks between Football Sports Development Limited and the AIFF had broken down over the renewal of the Master Rights Agreement, the contract that gives FSDL the right to run the ISL. The MRA was set to expire in December 2025, midway through what would have been a normal season, and with no renewal in sight, the whole thing stalled. It took Sports Ministry intervention just to get the season started, eventually kicking off in February, months late and under a cloud. And that was before you got to Kerala Blasters' own problems: the club had already been denied a Premier 1 licence by the AIFF over compliance failures at their home venue. Kerala Blasters had gone through manager after manager since Ivan Vukomanovic left in 2024, cycling through Mikael Stahre, TG Purushothaman and now David Catala, none of whom lasted. The results were dire. And quietly, the fans were starting to push back. Word was spreading that supporters were unhappy, that some were staying away, that the relationship between the club and its most loyal followers was fraying badly.

I went for the Chennaiyin match in March with two friends. We were giddy walking to the stadium, reminiscing about those twenty-person pilgrimages from over a decade ago, about how just walking through those gates used to give you goosebumps. We walked in, and it was silence. Not the quiet of a crowd holding its breath, just absence. The Blasters played decently but lost 1-0. We went home deflated but told ourselves it would get better.

An empty stadium during the 2026 season

We came back. This time with my friend's young nephews, who had never seen a live game and were vibrating with excitement. It was the Punjab match. There were even fewer people in the stadium. And to be fair to Punjab, they were playing some decent football. Organised, purposeful, clinical. The level of the ISL wasn't the problem that evening. Kerala Blasters were. The Blasters lost 1-3, a performance so listless it barely registered as a contest. When the board went up showing eight minutes of added time, one of the little boys turned to us and said, completely seriously: "We have to watch this for another eight minutes?" I didn't have a good answer. We had brought children to witness this, and somewhere between the empty stands and the scoreboard, it felt less like a football match and more like a collective punishment.

After that game, Manjappada made it official. The fan group stripped the East Gallery of every banner, flag and speaker, withdrew from ticket sales, and announced a full boycott of home matches. They blamed not just a poor season but what they described as a long pattern of poor decisions, weak player management and the total absence of a clear footballing vision. The Fan Advisory Board, set up by the club itself, issued a Letter of No Confidence, calling out the management and demanding accountability. Former Blasters player CK Vineeth pleaded publicly with fans to return, reminding them that the yellow wall was once so intimidating that visiting teams feared it. The yellow wall was gone. Shortly after, Catala was sacked. Ashley Westwood came in as interim coach.

We watched the change happen from our sofas. We hadn't meant to boycott, we just weren't in Kochi for the next couple of home games. But as KBFC started winning under Westwood, a different kind of logic set in: maybe we were the problem. Maybe they only win when we aren't there.

We decided we had to test that theory.

A packed stadium during the 2014 season

One player I was particularly excited to see in person was the new signing Franchu. The Argentine had been one of the bright spots of the turnaround, popping up with goals and assists with a flair that felt completely at odds with the early months of the season. The kickoff was at 5PM, an unusual slot. We got there early, found our seats in a stadium that was still far from full, and quietly said a little prayer hoping we weren't the problem after all.

They won 3-1. And Franchu delivered, bringing exactly the quality and spark I had hoped to see live. Bertomeu and Sreekuttan added their names to the scoresheet too. Five matches unbeaten. A team that had crawled out from the bottom and was now playing with genuine belief. The stadium wasn't shaking the way it used to. There was no tifo, no roar from the East Gallery. But there was something, a warmth in the crowd that felt like a memory returning. A glimpse of what it used to be, and what it could be again.

The season ends this weekend against FC Goa. The Blasters won't qualify for the playoffs. The mismanagement and the fractured trust with the fanbase won't be solved by a five-match unbeaten run. Manjappada hasn't lifted its boycott, though the Kerala Blasters Army has announced it will return for the final game to give the players a proper send-off, because the players at least have earned that much.

What this season has shown, more than anything, is just how much this club means to people, and how badly that can hurt when it's mishandled. The fans didn't go quiet because they stopped caring. They went quiet because they cared too much to pretend everything was fine. And when the team finally started playing like they meant it; the fans who could, came back. Twenty of us once showed up just because we loved it. Some things don't change. The yellow hasn't gone anywhere. It's just waiting to be given a reason.