Mohun Bagan today started practice for Churchill match.All the players were present in practice other than Baichung Bhutia. Baichung will miss next match against Churchill after referee showing him yellow card in last match, the decision was a questionable one as replay showed Mehraj had pushed Baichung in the box.

Here is the total schedule of practice of Mohun Bagan
February 26 – 8.30 am MB ground and 3 pm Salt Lake Stadium
February 27 – 8.30 am MB ground
February 28 – 8.30 am MB ground
March 1 – 8.30 am MB ground
March 2 – Team leaves for Goa

Team practiced for 1-1/2 hours today morning. After practice when asked if Mohun Bagan will miss the service of Baichung, Jose Barreto said, "Definitely we will miss Baichung, but we will have to make our plans accordingly without him." Commenting on preparation for Churcill match, he said, "We will definitely have plans for Odafa, he is a great striker and scored 6 goals in last match." On EB match, he said, "We just lost one match, before that we had won 10 matches in a row, East Bengal hardly did anything this season, for them beating us may be the goal, our goal is to win I league. It is surprising that few people are reacting in such as a way as if East Bengal by winning 1 match has got everything, whereas we have won 10 matches in a row and we had not achieved anything. We have won 2 tournaments this year and we are very much contender of winning I league too."

Coach Karim confidently said, "We will surely bounce back, we have done so many times this year like in KPL after George and MSc match, in Fed Cup after losing to Vasco, we won both tournaments. Right now we are title contenders of I league. Initially after the first few matches in I league, many people said we will fight relegation, now we are in 2nd position. After winning 10 matches in a row we have just lost one match, nothing more than that." When asked if he has anything to say to Subhash’ reactions, Karim said quoting Mahatma Gandhi "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. I respect all team’s coach. I follow certain ethics and will not say anything against coach of another team." He also added, "People should respect facts and the fact is that in this year we have played 36 matches, won 31 of those matches, won 2 tournaments and still quesions are being raised on our performance. We are still very much a title contender."

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.