East Bengal win derby & Calcutta league title

East Bengal Club defeated archrivals Mohun Bagan AC 2-0 at the Saltlake Stadium in a Calcutta Premier Division match to regain the Calcutta Football League title. Youngster Robin Singh scored both the goals for the red-and-gold which gave them the three vital points to seal the title with one league match to go.

For East Bengal is was their 32nd Calcutta Football League title, while their archrivals Mohun Bagan have 29 titles to their name. But for East Bengal it was the first title since 2006 as in the last thee seasons Mohun Bagan had won the Calcutta league.

It was a high voltage clash infront of about 100,000 fans at the Saltlake Stadium and East Bengal once more proved that currently they are the better of the two Kolkata giants. Both goals from Robin Singh were set-up by Australian Tolgey Ozbey. The first one in the 12th minute was a ball from Tolgey for Robin which Shilton Pal couldn't collect and allowed Robin to simply push in, while the second on the hour mark was nice piece of work by Tolgey Ozbey on the right with Robin heading it in.

Mohun Bagan did have their chances, but the league's top scorer Subair Muritala Ali just couldn't score while Jose Ramirez Barreto and Chidi Edeh remained off-colour on this day. The green-and-maroon did get numerous corners but they couldn't utilise any of those.

Surprisingly Nigerian midfielder of East Bengal Penn Ikechukwu Orji was named man of the match with Robin Singh or Tolgey Ozbey being better candidates. But that didn't bother the East Bengal faithfuls as thereafter it was celebration time for the fans, who lit burning torches to celebrate the victory.

For East Bengal and their English coach Trevor Morgan it will be the right morale boaster ahead of the bigger assignments in the I-League which starts next week.


East Bengal: Jayanta Pal; Saikat Saha Roy, Gurwinder Singh, Uga Okpara, Soumik Dey; Sanju Pradhan (87' Alvito D'Cunha), Mehtab Hussain, Sushant Mathew, Penn Ikechukwu Orji; Robin Singh (70' Budhiram Tudu), Tolgey Ozbey (66' Ravinder Singh)

Mohun Bagan: Shilton Pal, Rahul Kumar, Kingshuk Debnath, Harpreet Singh, R. Dhanarajan (68' Ishfaq Ahmed); Jayanta Sen (48' Snehasish Chakraborty), Manish Maithani, Surabuddin Mollick; Subair Muritala Ali (65' Ashim Biswas), Chidi Edeh, Jose Ramirez Barreto