The Kolkata derby played in Guwahati on Saturday was a damp squib. Mohun Bagan Super Giant and East Bengal FC, the country’s two biggest football clubs, played in front of 3,000-odd fans and the atmosphere was completely missing. Jamie Maclaren scored the fastest derby goal in the history of the Indian Super League (ISL), on two minutes, securing three points for Mohun Bagan. In the grand scheme of things, though, it was reduced to a subplot.
The game was moved out of Kolkata because the local administration couldn’t make adequate security arrangements due to the Gangasagar festival. And the FSDL, the ISL organisers, refused to change the date. It made Indian football’s biggest fixture stale. An anodyne display from both sides coupled with poor refereeing didn’t help matters either.
No wonder that Shyam Thapa, the superstar centre-forward of the 1970s who also served as the chairman of the All India Football Federation’s (AIFF) technical committee, was unimpressed. “The derby could have been postponed for a week,” he told RevSportz. “It has happened many times in the past. I don’t know what the obligation was this time. When the two Kolkata giants play, it’s not only about football. It’s also about the fan rivalry. This game revels in that as well. When 60,000-70,000 fans turn up at the ground, it creates a spectacle. A derby in front of 3,000-4,000 spectators was unfortunate.”
Maybe, it was symptomatic of a deeper malaise that plagues Indian football. The organisers failing to value the ISL’s golden goose shows a lack of care. “We are all helpless,” lamented Thapa. “We can only talk. Nobody cares to listen to us. The AIFF president (Kalyan Chaubey) is a former footballer. We expect him to look into such matters and work for the betterment of Indian football. Is he doing that? I don’t know.”
On the pitch, some poor refereeing decisions were made. East Bengal felt that they were denied a stonewall penalty. A few calls irked Mohun Bagan players as well. “The biggest problem is that the majority of the Indian referees lack on-pitch authority,” said the man whose bicycle-kick goal for Mohun Bagan against their arch-rivals in the 1978 Calcutta league became a part of the maidan folklore. “Mistakes can happen, but referees should always be in command. We don’t get it here.”
Thapa also rued the proliferation of bang-average foreign recruits in Indian football. “It is down to the weakness of the club officials,” he said. “These foreign players can never help raise the standards of Indian football.”