In 1977, the great city of Calcutta, the former gateway and hub of the British Empire and presently the cauldron of intellectual unrest and revolution, played host to an extraordinary game, the last but one ever played by the football legend himself, Pele. Yes, the New York Cosmos flew down to play a match against Mohun Bagan Atheletic Club, one half of Asia's oldest derby and the pride of the majority of the Indian football fans everywhere. The city was in an uproar. Everywhere little booklet containing biographies of Pele were published, sold and bought in droves. The game was to be played at Eden Gardens on 25th September, 1977, we did not have the Yuva Bharati Krirangan then. Pele arrived, but with him came the torrential monsoon shower, leaving the pitch clogged with water. Eden Gardens at that time did not have the underground drainage system and hence the slush and the soft underfoot condition. The great man was seen looking upon the sight of the slush with sombre countenance, and the city folks were worried too - would they see him play at all?
They did, the day after. I was fortunate to buy a ticket through my grandfather’s Mohun Bagan membership card. Armed with a large umbrella that belonged to my father (in those days the small folding umbrellas were a rare piece of household possession and mostly unavailable), I boarded a L-9 trolley double-decker bus from Golpark and ensured that I reached the stadium much before the stipulated kick-off time. My father and uncle decided to watch the match on the black and white television at home. Everyone in the city perhaps left everything to watch the great man in action. As in most exhibition ties, Pele played percentage football and was largely anonymous. Perhaps it was the slush that put him off his game…. Of course, there were the greats like Chinaglia and Carlos Alberto, to name a few who played alongside him. Pele showed his mastery as he essayed a defense-splitting through-pass on the stroke of the 17th minute, which an overlapping Alberto guided home. Bagan equalized immediately thereafter with the two brothers, Habib and Akbar playing some excellent one-twos with the latter putting it on a platter to Shyam Thapa whose rasping volley equalized the score-line. Bagan again scored on the 30th minute when Akbar’s scorcher came off the goalkeeper to his elder brother Habib, who made no mistake. At any rate, Mohun Bagan scored two brilliant goals, and the New York Cosmos scored one through Carlos Alberto and they were one behind. However, the Kolkata crowd at the Eden and on the television saw Pele's genius assert itself in one single moment, a long, curling free kick that was saved by Shivaji Banerjee, the Mohun Bagan custodian, in what was undoubtedly the moment of the match. At half time the score remained so. The match, the only chance an Indian team ever had to play and win against Pele, drew closer and closer, when, in the seventieth minute, the all-too-thinkable occurred - the referee awarded the Cosmos team a face-saving penalty kick that resulted out of a tough Sudhir Karmakar sliding tackle. It was taken and buried home by Giorgio Chinaglia, and Pele had for himself and Cosmos an undeserved draw.
Over thirty years later Calcutta now has a football stadium in Salt Lake that can hold perhaps as many spectators as the Marcana itself. The weather, however, is still unpredictable, with Norwesters a regular occurrence. It may rain before or on 27th May, but hopefully it will be a somewhat better underfoot condition that will greet Oliver Kahn, who will perhaps be playing his last game for Bayern Munich in his illustrious professional football career, against Mohun Bagan. Will the little biography booklets that surfaced during Pele’s visit again sell alongside the fake Bayern jerseys this time? Will the crowd chant his name as they did Pele's on that day? Yes, I think, and yes, I'm sure.
On 21st November, 1990 Mohun Bagan had the rare honour of hosting Cameroon world cupper Roger Milla.
He came with Diamont Club to play a tournament as part of Mohun Bagan club's centenary celebration. The match was held to a packed audience in Salt Lake Stadium. The much superior Cameroon team though won 3-1 with Milla scoring one goal. After the match, he praised quite a few footballers like Prashanta Banerjee and Subrata Bhattacharya.
It is a pity that Mohun Bagan will not be having the services of a majority of its players who are on national duty. Bhaichung Bhutia, India's captain and Mohun Bagan's foremost talent, and Bob Houghton, the national coach have expressed their profound fear of what Mohun Bagan’s defeat might mean to Indian football if this game, played by both sides to the full extent of their capabilities, is taken to its logical ends, which would surely result in the sort of score line which Roger Federer is capable of dishing out while demolishing his opponents at Wimbledon. But could Bhaichung Bhutia take heart from the thought that Luca Toni and Frank Ribery, to name just the two, will almost certainly not be there to terrorize our fragile defense line? Could he forget, for a moment, that India’s soccer pundits believe that we do not stand to lose much from a sporting defeat now than we did to gain from the draw in 1977, and remember instead that he belongs to a team that almost put one over Pele himself?
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