Mohun Bagan poised to lift NFL title

By Ramu Sharma / Gulf News  http://www.gulf-news.com/

With three matches in hand, two of them at home, there is little doubt that Mohun Bagan is the best placed team to clinch the National Football League title. Perched on the top of the ladder with 41 points from 19 matches, the Calcutta outfit which had started its recovery bid from midway through the first leg, has had a phenomenal run in the second, winning six of its eight matches and losing just one.

Mohun Bagan had had a disastrous beginning to the league, losing the first match to Tollygunge Agragami, but was a changed combination once the foreign players shed their inhibitions and adjusted to the requirements of the Indian conditions.

This was during midway through the first leg. From then onwards the Calcutta team has hardly taken a wrong step. Its transformation has been powered by Uzbekistan's Igor Shivkrin, Brazilian Jose Ramirez Baretto and Nigerian Stephan Aborwei, who served with JCT in the inaugural NL.

The three of them are the most dangerous and effective strike power in the league. The fact that Igor Shivkrin and Jose Ramirez Baretto have scored seven and four goals each speaks volumes of the contribution of the foreign element to Mohun Bagan's revival.

The presence of nearly 70 players in the National Football League is at once both an asset and liability. The players are distributed rather unevenly with wealth of the club sponsoring them being the determining factor. Thus the top few clubs are those well endowed with buying power and dominate the league.

Thus Goa's Churchill Brothers, second placed with 35 points from 18 matches, and Salgoacar, the early leaders and winners of all major tournaments last year, third (30 from 17) are well served by foreigner acquisitions, though not all of them have been able to fit into their roles.

Players from outside of India have generally been strikers and this has caused a rather embarrassing problem, particularly to those clubs possessing equally talented Indian players but who are either totally overshadowed by the foreign element or reduced to warming the reserve bench.

The dependence on foreigners is almost complete. In this contest one must admire the determination and will desplayed by JCT Club of Phagwara which, because of a cash-crunch, has had to depend entirely on home-spun heroes and yet has done extremely well. It is now lying fourth with 30 points from 19 matches, four points ahead of Mahindra and Mahindra, short term leaders three weeks ago.

The league has another ten days to go, and though only some highly unpredictable results can stop Mohun Bagan from climbing to the top. The two Goan outfits, Churchill Brothers and Salgaocar Club, have every chance of introducing an element of drama in the final moments. A word about East Bengal here. The Calcutta club is lying seventh with 25 points and it is still a mystery why it has not done better, what with some of the most exciting names in Indian football adorning its ranks.

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The suspension of Mohun Bagan for a year by the Asian Football Confederation for its 'failure' to hold the second round return match against Jubilo Iwata of Japan in the Asian Club Championship has created a minor stir on the Indian football scene.

The All-India Football Federation has blamed Mohun Bagan for its failure to inform the A-IFF of its inability to host the return match and has questioned the club for bypassing the federation in this matter and dealing directly with the Japanese Club.

The Calcutta club had lost the away match 0-8 but reneged on keeping the date for the return match at home after failing to obtain permission from the city police as the occasion clashed with Dusshera.

Mohun Bagan has only itself to blame for the whole episode. It knew three months in advance about the dates of the return match clashing with the Dusshera festival and should have asked for new dates.