Time Pass: April 2015

Salt Lake Stadium, Calcutta hosting the Derby Match

Well on paper, one can say that its not the biggest. I know that Indian Football does not contain the kind of money and professionalism it requires to make me announce that its the biggest. But yes, if on the derby day somehow you manage to be in Calcutta, chances are that a crowd of supporters painted in red green or red yellow will force you to move only in one direction, towards the Salt Lake Stadium.

I haven't got the chance to visit and enjoy this moment, and I never knew that such is the passion you can see on the streets of Calcutta on a derby day! But then the moment I searched "Kolkata Derby or Calcutta Derby" I got a huge list of videos which literally gave me goosebumps! And then i researched through the history and came to this conclusion that yes, it is, the biggest match in the world in that season of football!

So, for those who do not know, the Kolkata Derby is the name given to the football match between the Mohun Bagan Club and the East Bengal Club. Now before getting into detail, I would like to share this trailer of a documentary video, which tried to explain why it is the biggest derby match...

Source : Youtube ; http://mohunbaganvseastbengal.com/

Well let us now understand the history of both the clubs.

Nickname : "THE MARINERS"

Mohun Bagan Athletic Club is one of the oldest football clubs in Asia. Established in the year 1889, it was the first Indian team to defeat a European team, when they defeated the East Yorkshire Regiment, 2-1 to lift the 1911 IFA Shield. Among many matches and cups, in 1977 Mohun Bagan played a friendly match against the famous North American Soccer League club New York Cosmos which featured Pelé.The match, which took place at Eden Gardens, had a match attendance of 80,000. The match ended 2-2 and a lot of the Bagan players got a lot of praise by the star packed Cosmos.

Nickname : "Lal Holud"

East Bengal Football Club, on the other hand is founded in 1920 as East Bengal Club. More International in statistics, the club has represented India the most number of times in the Asian competitions, with its best performance being a semi-final berth in the AFC Cup 2013. East Bengal had also won ASEAN Club Championship in 2003. There are some interesting stories i found on the net associated with this club and i would like to share them here. The first about how the club was formed.On 28 July 1920 Mohun Bagan were scheduled to play Jorabagan in the Coochbehar Cup. Jorabagan sent out their starting eleven but with the notable exclusion of defender Sailesh Bose who was dropped from the squad for reasons not disclosed. The vice-president of Jorabagan, Suresh Chandra Chaudhuri, asked for Bose to be included in the line-up but the club coaches did not listen. Chaudhuri left the club due to this and, along with Raja Manmatha Nath Chaudhuri, Ramesh Chandra Sen, and Aurobinda Ghosh, formed East Bengal on 1 August 1920.
Another story is about the club emblem, the torch. This story also reflect the rivalry between EBC with Bagan. In 1930, India was swept over by Gandhi’s Satyagraha which had an effect on football. Indian clubs boycotted the ongoing Calcutta Football League midway through the season due to this. Amidst much confusion, Royal Regiment was declared winners in the first division. However, East Bengal, in spite of being well ahead in the second division, was not allowed to be promoted to the First Division. They suspected Mohun Bagan’s hand behind the league boycott to thwart East Bengal’s promotion to the First Division. Thousands of East Bengal fans and officials decided to hold a protest march at the East Bengal Ground. It was at this march that flaming torches were carried by the protestors. This gave the club officials the idea of a torch being the club emblem, which has stuck to this day.

THE RIVALRY

The two clubs currently meet at least 3 times a year, 2 in I-league and once in state league each. and more often if the clubs meet in other competitions like Federation Cup, IFA Shield, Durand Cup etc. Rivalry between the two teams is 89 years old, and features in the FIFA's classic derby list. The matches witness large audience attendance and rivalry between patrons.

Both the Kolkata superpowers have huge fan base across spreading all over the world. Both the clubs represent a specific class of Bengali people, Mohun Bagan represents people existing in the western part of Bengal while East Bengal is supported by people hailing from the eastern part of Bengal now Bangladesh. This is the fight between the natives and the immigrants.

The first major meeting between the two clubs occurred in 1925 and resulted in a 1-0 win for East Bengal in a Calcutta League match.In the return league of 1925 Mohun Bagan defeated East Bengal by 1-0. The result was repeated when the pair met for the first time in the prestigious IFA Shield in 1944. East Bengal’s semi-final triumph was all the more poignant due to Mohun Bagan’s historic and deep-seated affiliation with the tournament.

Though exact figures are disputed, the Mohun Bagan vs East Bengal clash reaches a historic milestone of 300 derby matches. East Bengal fans have got their noses comfortably ahead as they have won more than their city rivals. Till now, the Kolkata rivals East Bengal and Mohun Bagan have played 308 matches against each other. East Bengal has won 116, Mohun Bagan has won 86 and 106 matches have been drawn. East Bengal has scored 282 goals and Mohun Bagan 232.

The 1960s proved a golden period for Mohun Bagan and it concluded in perfect fashion for the Mariners. Having already won the league, Mohun then did the double, defeating their rivals on their own ground in the IFA Shield final. The 3-1 victory credited to the then revolutionary 4-2-4 formation employed by innovative coach Amal Dutta.

The wheel eventually turned, as happens in most such rivalries, and the 1970s was East Bengal’s decade. They lost only 1 derby in six years which culminated in a 5-0 IFA Shieldwin over their great rivals. The Red and Golds roared to a record 5-0 scoreline and, with it, a record of five consecutive Shield victories. Such was the ignominy surrounding the heavy defeat that several Mohun Bagan players spent the night holed up on a boat on the Ganges River trying to escape the wrath of shell-shocked supporters.

Arguably, the most memorable Kolkata derby of all took place in 1997 when a remarkable crowd of 131,000 – a record attendance for any sport in India – filled a heaving Salt Lake Stadium. Appropriately enough, India’s most recognisable footballer, Baichung Bhutia, took centre stage, scoring a hat-trick as East Bengal triumphed 4-1 in the semi-final of the Federation Cup. But he was unable to repeat his goal scoring heroics in the final, however, and his side lost against Salgaocar. Other memorable derbies got played in 2009 and 2005 when Mohun Bagan won 5-3 and East Bengal sealed the latter with 4-1.

The biggest margin of win was the victory of East Bengal by 5 goals to one. this match was played on 5th September 1975. One important aspect of this match was that one of the player from East Bengal played this match even though his mother passed away a few days ago. The winning side failed to scored one penalty also in the 11th minute, which if scored may had worsen the humiliation for their neighbors. Even the the shock of this match was so much for the Mohunbagan fans, that one fan committed a suicide after the match, writing on his suicide note that he will take the revenge in his next life by playing for the Mariners.

A fatal pandemonium occurred in the derby on 16th August, 1980 taking a toll of 16 young lives. This marks the darkest day of Indian football. As the referee gave Dilip Palit and Bidesh Basu the marching orders in the second half, the gallery burst into agitation. A stampede at the Eden Gardens resulted in the disaster.

Well, so such is the rivalry, and such is the passion of the crowd which goes to the Salt Lake Stadium to watch and their support their team. Searching on the figures I found out that now, this passion is somehow diminishing in the lights of Cricket, IPL, or ISL for that matter. But the one thing which remained at a constant level is the kind of aggression the two teams show in the field on the Derby Day. I never got a chance to see this with my eyes, but I would love to, and I hope that next time when I may get a chance to see this match, I experience the same old environment, one for which this is considered as the Biggest Football Derby Match !!!

And yes, if you want to know what it feels like to be a part of that mad crowd, watch this video:

And before I leave, to include in the end, i found many songs dedicated for these two clubs, and perhaps in the history of Indian Sports, including the so-called 'popular' teams of IPL, i don't think any team has such a large number of songs representing it...!!!
Here are some of those songs: