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An interesting and for one of the clubs crucial encounter is on the cards tomorrow in the latest Kolkata derby between East Bengal Club and Mohun Bagan AC. The red-and-gold need a win to stay in the I-League title race, while the green-and-maroon are only playing for pride but that means a lot in such a derby.
As I had written two month’s ago before the last derby, a derby remains a derby and anything can happen in such a game as incoming form and performances count very little in such a charged-up atmosphere. This season it has been mainly East Bengal with three win and a one-all draw in the last I-League derby in February. Still one needs to look at the two teams.
Trevor Morgan’s East Bengal seem to have overcome their mid-season I-League slump after two successive 3-0 wins against JCT and Air India. But the team will be weakened as goalkeeper Sandip Nandy and midfielder Susanth Mathew will have to sit out due to a card suspension, but Gurwinder Singh returns from suspension. The focus will be again on Australian striker Tolgay Ozbey, who in the last match scored a hattrick; but derbies have shown that they throw out unlikely heroes.
Mohun Bagan is facing a difficult end to a season in which the oldest club of Asia has not won a title and is set to finish mid-table in the I-League even though a top five I-League finish is still possible. They had a historic chance last week in the IFA Shield final, but they lost to Churchill Brothers and couldn’t recreate history a century after they first lifted the Shield.
Tomorrow coach Subhas Bhowmick will miss the services of talismanic striker Jose Ramirez Barreto, so the pressure will once more be on Chidi Edeh to deliver. And Bhowmick as a derby veteran knows, a positive result tomorrow, the fans and officials would be on his side.
The match will kick-off at 17.00 IST and will be played under floodlights at the Saltlake Stadium. The game will be telecast live on television on Mahua Khabor, a Bengali news channel.
