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“us vs them”
Football in Kolkata, over the past century, has revolved – like in Madrid, Merseyside and Manchester – around local derbies. In this case, the clash between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal attracts crowds of over 50,000 and dominates the football debate in the city.
“There is also a huge interest in football in other parts of India – Goa in the west, Kerala in the south and Sikkim and Manipur in the north-east,” said Kolkata-based football expert Debanjan Banerjee.
“But the conflict between the two biggest clubs in Kolkata has not made people love each other, but football intellectuals of a different kind than the rest of India. It means that football is discussed in depth throughout the year in Kolkata. Football is often the thread that connects the generations. Middle-aged East Bengal or Mohun Bagan today were supporting one decade old.”
Had Mohun Bagan or East Bengal been independent, Banerjee explained, neither club would have been as big as it is today. He said that football in Kolkata shapes the way fans think about it.
“It affects the way they look at politics, art and history,” he added.
Unusually for a Kolkata fan, Banerjee saw herself more as a student of football – its nature, its naivety, its love-at-first-sight beginnings, its underdog feeling – than the football itself. He also contributed a video report on the match between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal to the popular YouTube channel COPA90.
Last December, Messi visited several Indian cities. His appearance in Kolkata turned into chaos after he took off early, prompting angry fans to break barriers and run onto the field.
Banerjee said the agitation shows the deep impact on the football scene in Kolkata.
He said: “The city authorities were blamed for not organizing the event properly. “But the minister, the policeman, the volunteer worker at the stadium… they all had the same characters as the fan who paid a lot of money to buy a ticket.
However, even Messi doesn’t have the full responsibility of Kolkata becoming the province of Buenos Aires every four years. Some former fans of Argentina, such as the writer and football journalist Indrajit Hazra, 55, can remember the time in the 1980s when support for Argentina was not as regular in Kolkata as it is today, but it was rare.
If anything, Messi represents a long time in the Bengal-Argentina relationship. (Not only in Indian West Bengal, but across the border in Bangladesh, which is also pro-Argentina). That era began in 1986 – the first World Cup to be televised in India, so it is an unforgettable year in the lives of Indian football fans over the age of 50. That year, Kolkata experienced the magic of another Argentinian player: Diego Maradona.
Before 1986, Hazra explained, Brazilian football was the gold standard in Kolkata for more than three decades.
“Pele, who came to Kolkata in 1977 with the New York Cosmos to play an exhibition match against Mohun Bagan, was considered the greatest player of all time. Maradona changed all that with his miracles in 1986. We didn’t read about him; we saw him with our own eyes on TV.”
“To this day, those images are etched in my mind and those of millions of my generation.” he added.
When asked if he thought Messi was the greatest player of all time, he replied with a laugh, “Yes, Messi is good, but Maradona…”
He didn’t need to say much.
