Durand Cup 2024: East Bengal vs Mohun Bagan in historic Kolkata Derby opener

Durand Cup: East Bengal face Mohun Bagan SG as oldest rivalry opens the 135th edition of the oldest trophy

Kolkata, July 24

Asia's oldest football tournament could not have picked a bigger fixture to mark the occasion, handing its very first whistle of the season to the rivalry that defines Indian club football.

The Mariners will walk into the tournament as the most decorated club, with 17 Durand Cup titles -- a tally unmatched in the history of the event. The Red and Gold Brigade trail by the width of a single trophy, 16 to their name, close enough that every fresh meeting between the two feels like a chance to close the gap or stretch it.

The two sides have met more than 20 times in the tournament, East Bengal holding a narrow edge, and contested a dozen Durand Cup finals between them, the most recent in 2004, with East Bengal winning six to Mohun Bagan's four and two shared. It was in this very fixture, in 2023, that the record champions finally broke a 23-year wait for the trophy, beating their old rivals 1-0 in the final to claim that 17th title. Few rivalries anywhere carry quite this kind of built-in tension.

But history is not the only current running through this rivalry. The defending ISL champions arrive having ended a long wait for a national league crown last season, and that success travels with them into the Durand Cup like a favourable wind. There is a settled belief about a squad that has recently tasted the biggest prize in Indian club football, and the Red and Gold faithful will fill the stands sensing that this is a team no longer just competing with their oldest rivals, but genuinely built to beat them.

Midfielder Jeakson Singh Thounaojam, part of that title-winning group, put it plainly when asked about the mood in camp under new head coach Antonio Lopez Habas and said, "We are getting together as a family, and at the end of last season we achieved our objective. I'm really looking forward to this new season, to achieve the same objective with more determination," he said. "With the coach, and the trophies he has won, it will be a pleasure for me to play under him, for East Bengal. Obviously, for me, we are the favourite team."

Both benches, however, will have unfamiliar figures pacing them. Mohun Bagan Super Giant begin life under Panagiotis Dilmperis, the Greek coach who spent two seasons quietly excellent at Punjab FC before the Mariners came calling, and who now inherits a squad several notches richer than the one he left behind, headlined by the arrival of Miguel Figueira Damasceno.

Speaking to the media ahead of his first game in the dugout, Dilmperis made no attempt to play down the scale of what awaits him and said, "Starting with a derby against East Bengal is something that makes me feel excited, because this is the reason why football exists," he said. "Joining a club like Mohun Bagan, with this fan base, the owner, the history and huge expectations, creates for me not anxiety but big motivation."

Figueira's signing carries its own quiet poetry. Barely a year after arriving in Indian football, the Brazilian midfielder was named the ISL's best player and walked away with the Golden Ball, a central figure in East Bengal's title triumph. Now he wears green and maroon, and should he take the field on Saturday, it may well be his first taste of just how personal this fixture can feel from the other side of the divide.

The reinforcements up front have arrived too. Dejan Drazic, the Serbian forward brought in to sharpen a cutting edge that occasionally deserted the Kolkata giants last season, landed in the city only days ago and has already been given a proper introduction to what he has signed up for, saying, "For every player, foreigner or Indian, it is amazing to play a game like a derby in Kolkata," he said. "I was very surprised at the airport; this is the first time that has happened to me, and I am very grateful for that welcome. We are Mohun Bagan, and like everybody, we expect to win this game."

Across the touchline, East Bengal FC have turned to a coach who knows exactly what awaits him at the other end of the pitch, because he has stood there himself. Antonio Lopez Habas, the veteran Spanish tactician, takes charge of the Red and Gold Brigade having previously guided the Mariners to the 2023-24 ISL League Shield, arriving mid-season to steady a wavering campaign and steer it unbeaten to the title.

Asked whether facing his old club stirred any nostalgia, Habas was matter-of-fact about it and said, "No nostalgia. We have to think about the present and the future, because the past is the past," he said. "I absolutely respect my trajectory in India, with my players and the fans. But now it's another job, another side, for professional life. I have to fight for my dream now."

Few coaching arrivals anywhere in Indian football carry that particular symmetry, a man returning to the ground of his old triumph, this time hoping to spoil it for the side that now owns it.

There is a recent thread here too. This time last year, East Bengal had the upper hand in this fixture at the business end of the Durand Cup, edging past the record champions in a tightly fought quarter-final at this very stadium. That contest lingers in the memory of both camps, a reminder that recent form has been anything but one-sided.

None of it, in the end, will matter quite as much as what happens once the whistle goes. The Yuba Bharati Krirangan, home of the Durand Cup's Kolkata leg since 2019, has hosted this fixture before and will again. Still, an opener carries its own charge, a whole season unfurling from a single evening.

Saturday will not settle the argument between East Bengal FC and Mohun Bagan Super Giant. It never really does. But it will set the tone for a tournament, and there is nowhere better in world football for that tone to be set than under the lights of Kolkata, with a Derby to open the show.

— IANS