The Away End
Overview
The Away End is an English-language digital publication devoted entirely to Indian football. Published online at theawayend.co and listed in this directory from Mumbai, Maharashtra, it describes its remit with the tagline Indian Football: All Things Considered. That breadth is the defining feature of the site. Rather than limiting itself to the Indian Super League and the national team, which dominate mainstream coverage, The Away End sets out to document the game at every level of the Indian pyramid, from top-flight fixtures to state and city leagues and small local tournaments that rarely receive national attention.
The publication presents itself in deliberately informal terms, as a group of football lovers who watch the game from the stands. That supporter-led identity shapes its tone and its priorities. The Away End is as interested in a local tournament in a corner of Meghalaya, where it notes the winning team can be awarded a prize pig, as it is in the Kolkata Derby. For readers who follow Indian football beyond the televised leagues, that commitment to the game's grassroots is the main reason to visit.
What the Publication Sets Out to Do
The site organises its work under three plain headings: write, report and analyse. Writing means long-form stories centred mainly on football in India. Reporting means systematic coverage of competitions across the country. Analysis means tactical writing and statistics, an area in which the publication has tried to build a distinctive specialism.
According to its own About page, The Away End covers 50 state and city leagues, a figure it presents as still growing, and reports on tournaments around the country. The competitions it names include the Indian Super League, the I-League, the Indian Women's League, the Santosh Trophy, the Durand Cup, the second division league and the NECS Cup. That list is significant because it spans men's and women's football, national leagues, the historic inter-state Santosh Trophy and one of Asia's oldest cup competitions, the Durand Cup, alongside regional tournaments.
Coverage of Leagues, Cups and the National Team
The depth of the archive is visible in its competition pages. Its Durand Cup coverage, for example, includes detailed final reports across successive editions, recording NorthEast United FC's victory over Mohun Bagan in the 2024 final after a comeback and penalty shootout, Mohun Bagan's win over East Bengal in the 2023 final, and NorthEast United's retention of the trophy in 2025. Match reports are credited to the Away End Media Desk and draw, where noted, on official sources such as AIFF Media.
International football involving India is covered in the same detailed, match-by-match style. Reports of India's friendlies in October 2026, against Brazil and Uruguay at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan in Kolkata, combine narrative description of the play with historical context, such as noting earlier Indian scorers against the same opponents in past decades. Fixtures and results pages are a core part of the offer, including structured tables for the Indian Women's League and IWL 2 listing dates, stages, venues, kick-off times and scorers for group matches.
Data, Statistics and Expected Goals
Analysis is where The Away End most clearly separates itself from a conventional news portal. The publication describes itself as a fierce advocate of expected goals, commonly shortened to xG, and says it is the home of Expected Goals for Indian Football. Its social media profile similarly highlights tactical analysis, statistics and xG as core parts of the brand, alongside state and city league coverage.
The site has published explanatory work setting out how its xG model works, including discussion of why chance quality matters, why not all shots are equal, and how features describing a shot are used in a statistical model. It also notes a practical problem particular to India: teams play relatively few games, which makes statistical modelling harder. For data-minded supporters, coaches and analysts, this strand turns The Away End from a news source into a reference point for how Indian matches can be measured rather than merely described.
Indian Football Minnows and Women's Football
Alongside the main site, The Away End runs Indian Football Minnows, an initiative dedicated to promoting lesser-heard footballing stories in India. The project has its own social presence and invites contributions by direct message or by tagging the account. Its stated focus is stories that would otherwise go untold, which complements the main site's state and city league reporting and gives players, clubs and tournaments outside the spotlight a route to an audience.
Women's football is treated as part of the core coverage rather than an afterthought. The site maintains dedicated fixtures and results coverage for the Indian Women's League and IWL 2 and is associated with a separate social account for focused women's football updates. In a media landscape where the women's game in India has historically received limited sustained attention, maintaining league tables and match data for both tiers is a substantive editorial commitment.
People Behind the Site
The Away End is produced by a small, distributed team rather than a large newsroom. Its About page says the team is spread thin across the country, which fits its model of covering leagues in many different states. The page lists a founding team member named Nehal, described in the site's playful house style, and names advisors including Shlok, Abreshmina and Arka. Contributors named on the page include Samar, Sandeep, Ritwik, Philarima, Joyan, Steven and Tejas.
The contact route for readers, writers and collaborators is a single editorial email address published on the site, editor@theawayend.co. The invitation is explicit: anyone inclined to write, create or collaborate is encouraged to get in touch. That open door helps explain how a small core team is able to sustain coverage of dozens of leagues, since local knowledge from contributors around India is essential to reporting competitions that national outlets do not staff.
Language, Audience and Community Role
The Away End publishes in English, which makes its grassroots coverage accessible to supporters, researchers and football followers outside the states where matches are played. Its audience is best understood as the committed Indian football community: supporters of ISL and I-League clubs, followers of state leagues, fans of the national teams, and readers interested in the history and culture of the game in India.
Its community role is partly archival. By keeping fixtures, results, standings and match reports for competitions that are poorly documented elsewhere, the site preserves a record of Indian football below the top tier. That record matters to players and clubs seeking recognition, to journalists researching a tournament, and to supporters who want evidence of results that might otherwise survive only in local memory. In that sense the publication functions less like a breaking-news outlet and more like a living almanac of the Indian game.
Digital Presence and Platforms
The website itself is organised around news, tactical analysis and statistics, long-form stories, fixtures and results, and tables and standings. Social media reinforces those pillars. The publication's profile on X summarises it as Indian football, all things considered, with state and city leagues, tactical analysis, statistics and expected goals, and links readers onward to the Indian Football Minnows and women's football accounts. This multi-account structure lets different parts of the audience follow the strand they care about most, while the website remains the single home for the full archive.
How to Read and Support The Away End
New readers can approach The Away End in several ways. Supporters following a particular competition can start with the fixtures, results and standings pages for that league or cup. Readers who prefer stories can begin with the long-form writing, which places matches and tournaments in their local context. Those interested in analysis can follow the statistics and xG work to see matches assessed through chance quality rather than scoreline alone.
Supporting the publication, on the evidence of its own pages, is primarily about participation. It invites contributions and collaboration by email, welcomes stories for Indian Football Minnows, and relies on readers who know their local leagues to help document them. For an outlet whose mission is to leave no level of Indian football uncovered, that reader involvement is not an extra; it is central to how the coverage is made.
