Kolkata: East Bengal’s controversial victory over Patha Chakra a day ago has further snowballed into an even greater dispute as Mohun Bagan, who had earlier played out a 1-1 draw against Rainbows SC lashed out at the Calcutta Football League, calling it a, ‘circus’. They also accused the Indian Football Association (IFA) of biasness, and threatened to boycott the Kolkata based tournament in the future.
This entire issue started as a result of the referee’s decision to award East Bengal a penalty at the finishing stages of their match against Patha Chakra. Courtesy the successful penalty, the Red and Gold maintained their winning run and moved to the top of the table.
Club official Srinjoy Bose, taking to Facebook posted this with the image below, “It is best not to play this circus called Calcutta Football League. I have no regrets that last year we did not play the so called big circus match (last year CFL clash against East Bengal). See how true is this pix which i saw on facebook.”
Image credit-Facebook
East Bengal official Debabrata Sarkar in retaliation said, “I think Tumpai (Srinjoy Bose) understands football better than all the others. That is why he is making these comments.”
Mohun Bagan finance secretary Debashish Dutta too echoed Bose when he, as quoted by Xtratime said, “The IFA is working like a biased association and they are helping a particular team to win the league during last few seasons. They should name the association, East Bengal IFA Association.”
He further added, “You have seen that during the matches of that particular side, the referees are trying to hand them a win at any cost. If they see that nothing is going on their way, by hook or crook they are awarding penalties to that team to win the match. If it goes like this we will not play CFL from next year and will take the affiliation from Jharkhand.”
Dutta also took a dig at IFA secretary Utpal Ganguly and said, “He is the secretary of the IFA for almost 11 years. Before his tenure you all know that we won two back to back Calcutta Football League. But after his arrival we all know what the result is in last 9 or 10 years.”
However, he also assured that Mohun Bagan will play all their remaining three matches, one of which is the highly awaited clash against arch-rivals East Bengal scheduled to be played on the 24th of September.
IFA secretary Utpal Ganguly, in response to Dutta’s comments, said, “Every club should respect the parent body and this was unexpected from them. They are doing this every year. At first they say such kind of things and later they also send me an apology later by stating that it won’t happen again.”
He also added, “They have a member in the Governing committee, so they should bring a motion against me by stating that remove the General Secretary from his chair, we will become the CFL champion again.”