Soccer
How Asia's oldest football league made its mark
The Calcutta Football League is the birthplace of football in India and Asia's oldest league. After 120 years, the league continues to be one of the most prestigious sporting tournaments in India.
The authorities in England during the Victorian era picked up a penchant for naming any long stretch of open level area — usually situated just next to a large water body — an Esplanade. So, when the British traders travelled all the way to India and set up their bases in what would eventually become the metros, they followed the same trend. All major trade centres — Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (now Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai respectively) thus ended up having major hubs with the same name.
In Mumbai and Kolkata, these places were pretty similar in outlook — for their proximity to the lush greenery that worked as the lungs of the cities — called as the Maidan (pronounced Moydaan in Bengali) and ended up being the birthplaces of the two most popular sports in the nation. “The origins of Indian cricket (…) lie in the expanse of green ground at the southern end of island of Bombay,” historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in his book ‘A Corner of a Foreign Field’. If Mumbai was the torchbearer for cricket, Kolkata showed the way in football.
Mohun Bagan is one of the earliest Kolkata clubs
© Red Bull
According to the archives, the first exhibition match in the city was played in 1854, between Calcutta Club of Civilians and Gentleman of Barrackpore, consisting only foreign players. However, while football in India grew, Indian football took time to blossom. The year 1885 was a landmark year when Indians founded four clubs — Kumartuli, Wellington Club, Town Club and National Club — following the lead of Shovabazar club, which was run by a royal family.
Even though clubs started mushrooming in and around the capital, playing opportunities were meagre as the representatives of British Raj were not interested in sharing the field with the population they ruled over. The Trades Cup mostly accommodated college teams, while the IFA Shield was a knockout affair. It was the advent of Calcutta Football League (CFL) in 1898, which seemed to be the point of bloom for Indian football, but it wasn’t. Unbelievable as it may sound now, Indian clubs were not a part of Asia’s oldest league for the first 15 seasons, and it was only in 1914 that Mohun Bagan and Aryans were inducted in the league’s second division.
Turning point
Mohun Bagan — nicknamed the Green and Maroons for their kit colours or the Mariners for their crest — had pulled off a big upset three years before inclusion in the league. They defeated East Yorkshire in the 1911 IFA Shield Final to mark the first major success story by an Indian club, and arguably the biggest till date considering its effect on the socio-political milieu. The Mariners continued their success in CFL also, getting promoted in the first year itself. With the inclusion of East Bengal in 1925, the competition soon captured the imagination of Bengalis as it became not only the favourite pastime but also a medium of vehement opposition to the rule of the Empire.
While the fanaticism rose exponentially, success was hard to come by. There was not much to show for in the first 20 years of participation. However, with the independence movement gathering pace in the early thirties, the mighty British military teams had to prioritise their day jobs over the recreational activity, which along with the continuing decline of another significant force, Dalhousie, paved the way for Indian clubs’ success.
CFL matches draw crowds of 15,000 on average
© Red Bull
At this juncture, Mohammedan Sporting, which was founded in 1891 to strengthen Muslim brotherhood but failed to lure the elite to its fan base, received a shot in the arm with the induction of SA Aziz as its chief official. The former hockey player went on a tedious recruiting journey and roped in players of his religion from all over the country; Jumma Khan from North-West India, Mashum, Rehmat and Mahiuddin from Bengaluru, Aqil Ahmed from Delhi and the legendary Samad, who was playing for the Railways. However, this was not the best example of Aziz's prudence.
Indian football’s failings from the twenties to the fifties can be attributed mainly to the insistence on playing barefoot. This was displayed in the national team’s 10-1 defeat against Yugoslavia in 1952; many players experienced almost frozen feet in Helsinki’s extreme cold. However, Aziz ensured his outfit played with boots and Mohammedan became the first major Indian club to adopt the modern equipment almost two decades before the national team. And, silverware poured in.
The Black and Whites, as they were called for their kit colours, became the first Indian team to win the CFL in 1934 in their maiden appearance in the first division. The juggernaut kept on rolling. From 1934 to 1941, they won the league seven out of eight times, with 1939 being the only exception when they didn’t participate. With the Second World War starting in 1939, the participation of the British teams went down significantly, tilting the scenario more in favour of local outfits.
Rise in popularity
In the post-independence years, the glamour of the league only went up. While Bangalore Muslims, Tata Sports Club (Mumbai), JCT (Punjab), Dempo and Salgaocar (both Goa) all became potent forces, the three Kolkata giants — Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammedan Sporting — continued to form the core of the national team. The league matches mostly played in monsoon became the most talked about event in the state's sports calendar. Matches involving the big forces, which were often played at the Eden Gardens, regularly attracted more than 30,000 fans.
The fanaticism reached unprecedented heights in the seventies. Unlike the pre-independence years, many modes of entertainment had entered households, but football had a second birth in a city riddled with political turmoil. It coincided with the emergence of several Bengali footballers who would make the headlines for years to come — Subrata Bhattacharya, Subhash Bhowmick, Goutam Sarkar, Prasun Banerjee, Surajit Sengupta, et al. Among the players who came from outside, Mohammed Habib, Akbar, Francis D’Souza, Xavier Pius, Ulganathan and Shabbir Ali were the most popular ones.
Over 5000 players in 158 teams play the league
© Red Bull
The CFL had a long history of crowd trouble, and the burgeoning fanfare exacerbated it. In one infamous incident, a couple of Mohun Bagan players had to spend the night in a boat on the Ganges after the team lost 5-0 to arch-rivals East Bengal. The rapidly increasing off-the-field filth finally culminated in one of the darkest days of Indian football when 16 fans lost their lives because of a stampede and rioting during a Kolkata derby on 16th August 1980.
The eighties and nineties revolved around the rivalry of two of Indian football’s most famous coaches — PK Banerjee and Amal Dutta.
Intense rivalry
After Mohammedan’s 1981 triumph, the competition became the hegemony of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. Since then, a familiar trend has seen minnows facing the two star-studded sides park the bus in an attempt to snatch a point. The dropped points against smaller sides often don’t matter; the derby between the Kolkata giants usually ends up being the title-decider.
East Bengal, though, has taken their domination to a new level in this decade. The Red and Golds won their eighth consecutive title on 24th September as they drew the last match of the league campaign 2-2 with Mohun Bagan. During the streak, which is also the best in the history of the 120-year-old tournament, they have had changes in coaching staff and overhauled their squad, but the club has always been in charge of the title races.
Mohun Bagan and East Bengal play the Kolkata derby
© Red Bull
However, the unprecedented success story of their arch-rivals has not deterred the Mohun Bagan fans. The century-old side, even though failing on the domestic front, has seen much success on the national stage, winning the I-League once and finishing runners-up twice in the last three campaigns. So, it was expected that both sets of fans would turn out in large numbers this season.
But what transpired from the start of the season baffled most long-time followers. The galleries were chock-a-block even in the matches against little known local sides, recording more than 15,000 fans for almost every game. Such was the rush at the ticket counters that many fans had to return home after the grounds were declared 'house full'. To pacify them, Mohun Bagan installed a giant-screen outside the ground in a first for Indian football.
Most news reports in the local media reverberated the popular feeling — the passion of the seventies is back. With it returned the filth; opponents have had to leave the grounds of the big teams in police vans, and referees have been verbally attacked and physically assaulted by many impassioned coaches and footballers.
It would also be unfair if one talks only about the three big forces. The smaller, cash-strapped sides are adept at recruiting players who later grab headlines at the national stage. For example, three foreigners who were pivotal to Aizawl FC’s famous I-League victory in the 2016-17 season — Eze Kingsley, Kamo Bayi and Alfred Jaryan — are all well-known faces to Kolkata fans for their long involvement in the CFL for clubs like Peerless and George Telegraph.
Also, when someone talks about Calcutta Football League, it’s assumed that he or she is talking about the Premier Division A — the highest level of the competition. However, there are five more tiers of the competition. One of them is called the ‘nursery league’ as it only involves sub-junior teams. In total, the league has 158 competing teams and more than 5,000 players plying their trade, making it the biggest league competition in the country.
Utpal Ganguli, the secretary of the league-organising Indian Football Association, is unperturbed by the sheer amount of pressure that his organisation must handle in a four-month period. “This is nothing new for us. We are very much used to it,” he says.
The league has five tiers and a nursery league
© Red Bull
The present and future
Over the years, much has changed in fan culture with the introduction of European football on Indian television. These days, portions of the gallery keep on singing for the entirety of the match — a welcome change to the regular Maidan scenario, where spectators always looked enraged.
The introduction of the Indian Super League (ISL) has dealt a body blow to the state leagues. But the CFL has been able to keep on sailing, at least for the time being, based on its legacy, the big names and the extensive network of clubs it has harboured over the last century. Compared to the big leagues, the CFL also boasts large numbers in viewership; the league’s top twenty most-attended matches saw turn-outs much better than the I-League, and TV coverage over the last four years has been superior to the national competition as well.
There will be hurdles to overcome in the immediate future with the ever-changing landscape of Indian football, but nobody will be able to question the inimitable contribution of the oldest league to the country's golden period in football.