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Mohun Bagan SG – India’s only team in the newly-branded AFC Champions League Two this season. The latest structural rejig snatched a position in the Champions League Elite from the 22-ranked Asian country. East Bengal will play in the Challenge League, the third-tier AFC men’s club competition.
Queues to enter the Salt Lake Stadium on Wednesday, September 19, weren’t as long and serpentine as traditionally associated with a Mohun Bagan game. Vendors were begrudgingly selling the green-and-maroon jerseys. And the ticket bunches with the hoarders were considerably thick even 30 minutes before kick-off.
The Mariners were winless in their last two matches, which included a loss in the Durand Cup final to NorthEast United. They won the two games before that on penalties. Nine goals were conceded in the first five matches under new head coach Jose Molina. To compound the woes, marquee signings Jamie Maclaren and Alberto Rodriguez were out injured.
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But make no mistake, Mohun Bagan’s opening match of ACL Two against Tajikistan’s Ravshan Kulob was a big deal. There was a lot at stake. There was so much to prove.
Molina made five changes from the side which relinquished a comfortable 2-0 lead to draw the ISL 2024/25 opener against Mumbai City FC. Manvir Singh, who was not even used as a substitute last Friday, was in the starting line-up. So was Anirudh Thapa in place of the excellent Apuia in midfield, and Tom Aldred as a like-for-like change for Rodriguez. Surprisingly, Greg Stewart was on the bench along with Liston Colaco, while Sahal Abdul Samad was fielded on the left.
Mohun Bagan didn’t have a single shot on target in the first half. Only two shots were hit in total in the entire 45 minutes plus 60 seconds of added time. Lacking any sort of creativity and penetration, the green-and-maroon brigade seemed happy to pass the ball around in their own half. They hogged 65 percent of the possession. For the record, out of the total 407 accurate passes the hosts played in the entire match, the three centre-backs accounted for 202.
Ravshan weren’t running away with the game, but the two-time Tajikistan Higher League champions were visibly quicker and stronger than their Indian counterparts. The first clear chance was carved out by their No. 9 Kojo Matic. The Bosnian forward lobbed the ball over Mohun Bagan’s high line and found Muhammadjon Rahimov, who timed his run to perfection, through on goal. But goalkeeper Vishal Kaith pulled off a sharp reflex save to deny the Ravshan skipper’s powerful volley.
The 2023/24 ISL Shield winners, on the other hand, relied primarily on long balls (read: hope). Star striker Dimi Petratos was frequently dropping back to gather possession and release either Jason Cummings or Abdul Samad. But they posed no threat to Ghanaians Samuel Ofori and David Mawutor. Shodidzhon Murodov, deployed in midfield, was creating play through the left wing, then charging back the next moment to thwart Manvir Singh.
Mohun Bagan’s frustration was palpable as Asish Rai got into the books for kicking Khaitov Azizbek after getting dispossessed. Thapa also received yellow in the second half for tugging Maksumov Jamshed’s shirt after not being able to keep up pace.
How it all changed in the second half
The second half began with both teams showing increased work rate and aggression. But neither altered any stat. By the end of it all, both Mohun Bagan and Ravshan Kulob had two shots each on target to their name. It was a tame, goalless draw, with both teams rendered wondering if it was a point won or two of them dropped.
“We must confess that Mohun Bagan played really well. But just imagine, I was a person in the technical arena and I couldn’t breathe. So what can we say about the players who were running for 90 minutes in such conditions? We have never seen such conditions before.
“When we play in Tajikistan, the weather is very different. Especially when it gets dark, the conditions become even cooler. But here, it doesn’t matter whether it’s dark or not – the weather remains the same,” Ravshan coach Mami Nazarzadeh told reporters after the match.
Now, let’s go back to when Mohun Bagan hadn’t yet left their hotel. In the pre-match meeting, Jose Molina asked his team to use this very weather against their Tajik opponents. The plan was to intentionally play slow, wear the rivals out, and then land the killer punch.
“I told the players that the opponents come from a country with cold and dry weather. Here, it is hot and humid. I said, ‘Be patient, keep the ball, move the ball. Because they will get tired at the end if we do the right things.’ And I think we did so. But eventually, we couldn’t score,” Molina revealed in the post-match press conference.
Daytime temperatures in Tajikistan are pretty much the same as what plains in India are currently experiencing. But it is the sweating in Kolkata which can be lethal for even someone from the northern part of the country. To put things into perspective, the humidity in Kulob – the city Ravshan is based out of – hovers between 20 to 30 percent. The corresponding figure reaches 70 in September evenings in Kolkata, thus pushing the real feel to seven or eight degrees above the actual. And not to forget, the unhealthy air quality.
But it is what it is. And it nearly worked for Mohun Bagan. They had their first shot on target in the 76th minute. Cummings finally latched on to a delivery and found himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper. But with a backtracking Oforo breathing down his neck and Hrytsenko charging towards him, the Australian couldn’t get a shot away. He was probably in two minds as he tried to chip the goalie but ended up giving a simple catch.
The pass was threaded by Apuia, who had come on along with Liston Colaco. Greg Stewart and Abhishek Suryavanshi were warming up in front of the technical area. A few minutes later, the Scotsman was fuming at Liston for not playing the ball to him despite being unmarked in front of goal.
The next gilt-edged chance fell to Liston. Getting on to Stewart’s perfectly-weighed through ball, he entered Ravshan’s box from the left and just had the goalkeeper to beat. But the Goa man went for the far post and smashed it horribly wide. While replacing Sahal with Liston definitely injected pace into the left wing, Stewart’s introduction awakened the midfield. The energy rubbed off on Petratos too.
Just a few seconds later, the crowd erupted and Dimi Petratos was off on a celebratory run after slotting home Cummings’ deflected shot. But the referee raised the offside flag, deeming it an attempted block by Ofori that put the ball at the Aussie’s feet. Suddenly, a complete mirror image of the first half was painting itself. It was Mohun Bagan who were zooming into the final third, leaving the Ravshan players spluttering and coughing.
In the dying embers of the match, Petratos again ran through on goal, leaving the two Ravshan centre-halves in the dust. The situation was so hopeless that Nazarov Kholmurod made a lunging challenge from behind to bring him down. But the Mohun Bagan star couldn’t sneak in his shot through an onrushing Hrytsenko. He, however, blamed it on the touch from Nazarov.
“Everybody saw it. There were a lot of situations [where the referee didn’t sanction them]. My legs were bleeding, but there was still no card,” Dimitrios Petratos said in the mixed zone.
Petratos and Cummings combined for one final attack, but to no avail. Mohun Bagan fired nine shots in the second half alone. It was so near yet so far. It was just a solitary point but a lot of boxes ticked – the biggest of them being the clean sheet.
“You were pushing me every day here, right? [laughs] Because we were conceding two goals in every match. And we have kept a clean sheet tonight. But we have also scored two goals in every match. And today, we didn’t score, although we had the chances. We are trying to find a balance to not concede goals and score goals. And today, the opponent didn’t have many chances to score while we had four or five absolutely clear ones. So we are closer to our target and we can win more matches this way,” Jose Molina stated.
As the match seemed destined for a stalemate, a section of the Mohun Bagan fans started chanting ‘Go back, Molina.’ When asked about it in the media interaction, the coach was extremely professional and handled the curveball with aplomb. He quipped:
“Go back where? Home or Hyatt Hotel?”
It’s time to go back to the hotel, to that meeting room, for more such masterclasses.
