Gokulam Kerala Football Club is an Indian professional football club based in Calicut, Kerala. Founded in 2017, the club competes in the I-League, the second tier of Indian football league system. They won the 2020–21 I-League to become the first ever club from Kerala to win an I-League title, and became the first team to defend the I-League title in 2021–22 season. Gokulam is also the first club from Kerala to qualify for a continental competition, the AFC Cup.
Nicknamed Malabarians, Gokulam Kerala represents the state of Kerala, predominantly its Malabar region. Affiliated with Kerala Football Association (KFA), the club also competes in Kerala Premier League, and clinched its first title in 2018.
History
Formation and early years (2017–2020)
Gokulam Kerala was founded in January 2017. On 20 September, after the second round of bidding invitations, the bid evaluation committee decided to award Sree Gokulam Group the right to field their team in the Hero I-League 2017–18 season onwards from Calicut, Kerala. Although the club did not have a good beginning, they went on to defeat clubs like East Bengal, Mohun Bagan and Minerva Punjab by the end of the season. Gokulam Kerala hired Spaniard Fernando Santiago Varela as head coach in March 2018.
On 15 March 2018, Gokulam played the Super Cup qualifiers against North East United FC and was qualified with a 2-goal victory. In the pre-quarterfinals of the Super Cup on 1 April 2018, they were leading against Bengaluru FC by 0–1 until 60 minutes with a goal scored by the striker Henry Kisekka but Bengaluru scored a stoppage time goal which led to a defeat of 2–1.
Gokulam in 2019, for the first time went abroad and participated at the 2019 Sheikh Kamal International Club Cup in Bangladesh, where they qualified for the Semi-finals after finishing 2nd in Group B.