The 114th edition of the historic IFA Shield will most likely start from 25th August 2009 and the final will be held on 10th September, 2009. Today in a press meet at IFA Office, Secretary Mr. Utpal Ganguly said that AIFF has included IFA shield and Durand Cup in their yearly calendar. IFA is also trying to bring English Premier League Teams like Everton or Stoke City to play in the Shield. There will be either 1 foreign team if total number of teams is 8, or it may become 2 if total team participating in Shield becomes 10. Mr. Ganguly also told that from this year IFA Premier League and Super league will be merged with 17 teams total and will start in the first week of October. After 28th Feb, Kolkata Teams in the current I-League will play their rest of the home matches at Barasat Stadium.
COURTESY: www.kolkatafootball.com

11.9.2007 – that was the last time Bagan went down aganst KingfisherEast Bengal 2-3, as bhaichung Bhutia’s goal was cancelled by referee K. Shankar. After that Bagan went for a dream run and remained unbeaten for 9 matches. But Syed Rahim Nabi had finally led his club to break the jinx on 22.2.2009

Nabi played pretty well today  having scored 2 goals in the first half and had the final pass to Sunil Chettry who scored the third. Bagan went down 0-3. That means, Bagan went down in the 2nd position of the iLeague, and Sporting clube de Goa moved up. That also means sharing the platform with Manchester United of 11 consecutive wins – came to an end.

Not only Nabi, Yakubu, Abhra Mandal and M. Suresh played really well for KEB today. Bagan failed to break the KEB defense – as either Suresh or Abhra was there to stop Bagan from scoring. One should give full credits to Subhash Bhawmik’s team for this scoreline.

At the same time AIFF must review and see whether the referring standard of this game was up to the mark. There were some mistakes – and was all of them unintentional ? For e.g. Bhaichung  Bhutia was trapped inside the penalty box by Mehrajuddin but surprisingly the referee instead of awarding a penalty , booked Bhainchung. The second goal KEB scored was from a free kick that was gifted to KEB by the referee. There were few other occasions where the referee allowed KEB players to play act – waste time and earn free kicks. Throw-in for Bagan were converted to free kicks for KEB.

Besides, the midfield really flopped and defense seem to e fragile. Karim needs to repair this fast since Bagan will be facing Churchill next – and won’t get Bhaichung Bhutia’s service thanks to Dinesh Nair.

Fed Cup winners Mohun Bagan having created a record in the I-League face East Bengal Club on Sunday, 22nd Feb’08. Which team wins or loses is immaterial but statistics reveal that Mohun Bagan are better placed in winning this match also despite media hostility.

After Mohun Bagan has created a record by winning 10 consecutive matches in I league, as usual, a few media are trying to demean the efforts of team Mohun Bagan by constantly saying that team is lucky to win matches. It is really shocking that when a team from Bengal is a title contender after so many years, instead of staying with the team, few media are trying to find "faults" though majority is doing their job professionally and sensibly. By luck a team can win maximum 1-2 and not 10 wins in a row. Full credit goes to Karim Bencharifa who is doing a tremendous job so far this year. Mohun bagan has so far won Kolkata league, Federation cup, qualified for AFC Cup and is leading the I league table currently. We have seen Karim formulating strategy according to situation of the game and according to opponent team’s game plan.

Score of the last 10 Mohun Bagan matches are:

Mohun Bagan 1 vs Dempo 0 (away match)

Mohun Bagan 1 vs Churchill 0 (home match)

Mohun Bagan 2 vs JCT 0 (home match)

Mohun Bagan 2 vs Vasco 1 (away match)

Mohun Bagan 1 vs Mahindra 0 (home match)

Mohun Bagan 2 vs Chirag 0

Mohun Bagan 3 vs Mumbai FC 0 (away match)

Mohun Bagan 2 vs Air India 1 (away match)

Mohun Bagan 1 vs Sporting de Goa 0 (home match)

Mohun Bagan 1 vs Mohammedan 0

In the last 10 matches, Mohun Bagan scored 16 goals and conceded just 2 goals and 4 of these 10 matches were away matches. In 2 of the above Matches against Dempo and Churchill who are title contenders, Mohun Bagan played more than 45 minutes with 10 man out of which one was an away match. Credit goes to coach, team management, and all players for this dream run that Mohun Bagan is having now.

After last match Karim said, "To win any big tournament, the main important factor is not conceding goals. If you see major tournaments in Europe, not always the team who scored maximum goals wins, usually it is the team who scores goals and does not concede much goal becomes the Champion." With the striking force Mohun Bagan have, scoring goals is not at all an issue. Baichung and Barreto CAN score goals and WILL score goals but the main factor is that coach has been successful in making the defence solid and making the defensive part of midfield right. Last 2 years, Mohun Bagan lacked a quality defensive medio. karim has prepared nicely Rakesh for this position and Rakesh is doing his job to perfection with help from Marcos whose inclusion has also helped our team a lot. Kareem also said, "You know, club officials, players, we coaching staff all have till now done our jobs and this has resulted in this dream run so far. Still we have many matches left and right now we are planning match by match and this 10 match win in a trot will be of no significance if we don’t win I league. All of our main target is now winning the I league."

About a month back, Baichung had said, "Match after match, all the players in our team are doing their job. The players who are playing for 90 minutes as well as those who are playing for 9 minutes and also those who are sitting in reserve bench all have done their job assigned by coach. Karim is a very good coach and credit goes to him for building the team spirit. There is good coordination between the junior and senior players in our team. Our coach gives importance to all the players, even those who sits in reserve bench. He has good Communication with all players. Every player thinks that coach gives him importance and that is the reason why they give their 100% while playing. Another thing which coach has done is that he has kept reserve bench ready and has prepared extra players for all positions."

Meanwhile, AIFF has given recognition to Mohun Bagan’s successive win and has published a interview in their official site. To read the interview, click www.the-aiff.com/i-pnfl-league/news_details.php?news_id=115 and also FIFA, the highest authority of football in world has congratulated Mohun Bagan team for this record and has taken an interview by e-mail of coach Karim which they have published in their website, www.fifa.com/worldfootball/clubfootball/news/newsid=1030909.html#bagan+back+with+bang

STATISTICS COMPILED BY RANA BOSE