It was November 2020 and India were playing Australia in what was cricket’s comeback match with spectators after a nine-month Covid-induced break. In normal circumstances, this would have been a huge occasion. Virat Kohli and his boys taking on Australia in Australia in what was a marquee series. It was enough to galvanize the entire country and drive the sporting discourse for days. However, it was not so on this particular day. To take on cricket in India is no mean feat, and if there is one sporting event which can do so in Bengal and perhaps win, that is the Mohun Bagan Super Giant-East Bengal FC derby. To leave the semantics of naming aside, in essence it is a contest between two cult teams, two different kinds of emotions and two different cultures.
Two and a half years down the line, and nothing has changed. With India playing the West Indies in a T20 series, which is nicely poised, one expected cricket to continue to take centre stage. Not so. By afternoon on August 12, 2023, it will all be football.
And may I say, the intensity is such that it could be labelled Asia’s biggest footballing contest. Thanks to these two teams, the Durand Cup is expected to be a success and chances are that it will be the biggest in recent times with East Bengal FC now better equipped to deal with MBSG. I am not going into the result of the contest. That MBSG is unbeaten for over four years now is not the subject matter of this piece. Results will change over time, for that’s sport. What will not change, however, is the interest and the intensity, and that’s the only thing that matters to me. It means the world to Indian football, and going forward, could well fulfil the dream of taking the sport in India to a very different pedestal. Mohun Bagan and East Bengal always had the passion. The derby always had the emotion of fans associated with it. With the ISL, they now have the corporate wherewithal to back the fan passion and ensure that facilities and infrastructure aren’t impediments. And that’s what makes this derby hugely special.
Two separate instances sum up the intensity of this derby best. A few years earlier an ardent Mohun Bagan fan got up to read in the morning papers that the club, for want of funds, was thinking of not retaining Jose Ramirez Barretto, the mercurial Brazilian forward who played for the club for more than a decade. Dropping everything on hand, the fan had reached the club tent by noon with his only real material asset – the legal documents for his one-bedroom flat. He wanted to give it to the officials to sell the flat and retain Barretto.
East Bengal, surely, couldn’t be too far behind.
A South Kolkata couple converted their entire drawing room into a miniature East Bengal ground. There’s a goalpost, a gallery, multiple club flags, a tent and also a canteen!
Also Read: Settled Mohun Bagan Start Clear Favourites Against East Bengal, their Eternal Rivals
None of this should surprise a follower of Indian football, who is well versed with what the Mohun Bagan-East Bengal contest really means. One of the world’s foremost sporting rivalries, it has and will stand the test of time. Yes the clubs did not really modernise with time, and they did not keep pace with commercialism and globalisation. But fandom, it must be said, is an island which has staved off all interference. That is why every newspaper in the region has a dedicated section on the Kolkata derby on match day. All talk in the paras and bazaars of Kolkata is about Ferrando and Cummings and Mahesh Naorem and Carles Cuadrat.
Mohun Bagan versus East Bengal isn’t a mere football rivalry. It is a sentiment, and a part of the ethos that is integral to the Bengali identity. It doesn’t matter who plays for either of the teams or who coaches them, for all that is relevant is that it is a contest between the Green-and-Maroon and the Red-and-Yellow. And that’s why fans shouldn’t really bother much about naming and semantics, and just continue to enjoy this 100-year-old legacy.
From the time Nepal Chakrabarty scored the first goal in the Kolkata derby in 1925, the derby has to be the most talked-about event in Bengal on the day it is played. No wonder there are thousands of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan fans who are on social media continuously engaged in a fascinating banter of sorts. The TRP for the game will surely be the highest the Durand Cup has seen this season, and that’s only going to get better with Indian football on an upswing.
Head to head battles in Kolkata Derby.#kolkataderby #DurandCup2023 pic.twitter.com/aWkkALbPuh
— RevSportz (@RevSportz) August 11, 2023
On most days in a derby, the game does not scale any great heights. The tension and the intensity are such that fans are often consumed by the occasion and find it impossible to stay calm and rational. The standard of play doesn’t really matter. We, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal fans, will still watch. Even watch it ahead of an EPL game between Man City and Man United. This rivalry is an extension of us, and to see the two teams play weds us to our roots in Kolkata.
In 1975, and I hate to recount this as a Mohun Bagan fan, East Bengal won the derby 5-0. In shame and sorrow, one Umakanta Palodhi committed suicide. He couldn’t bear the shock, and hoped that he would be born again to avenge the defeat. We won’t ever know if that can happen. But what we do know is that Palodhi is not alone. There are millions like him making this rivalry between two teams of a country ranked 99th in the FIFA rankings no less than Real Madrid versus Barcelona, or Boca Juniors versus River Plate. And this 99th rank could well become 80 soon thanks to come proper planning. Imagine if that happens, what it would do to this rivalry. To go back to Bill Shankly, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you it’s much more important than that.”
I will end by saying that MBSG versus East Bengal FC has the potential to be watched by those in Europe as well. Rather, more globally. That’s what we should aspire to. Just like we in India sit down to watch Man United v Man City, there will come a day, with professionalism and corporatisation, that European football fans will tell themselves that today it is time to order fish and chips and sit in front of our TV sets to watch India’s greatest football derby. That’s the day we are all waiting for, and that’s what this derby should aspire to. With high-quality television coverage and proper build-up, this could well happen, and that will in turn benefit Indian football going forward. For, after all, sport is an aspiration that nurtures and fuels dreams, and Mohun Bagan-East Bengal is the stuff of sports fans’ fantasies in India and the diaspora.
Also Read: Durand Cup: East Bengal’s Chance to Reclaim Ground lost to Mohun Bagan