No clarity on Kolkata derby as Asia’s oldest league starts on Tuesday

Paused by the pandemic in 2020, a new season of the Calcutta Football League, Asia’s oldest active league, will start on Tuesday with uncertainty over the participation of its biggest draw – the derby between ATK Mohun Bagan and SC East Bengal.

Competition in Premier Division A of the Calcutta Football League, which has 10 tiers including two in the nursery division for men and one division for women, will start with reigning champions Peerless taking on Kidderpore on the Mohun Bagan ground. It will continue till October 3, said Subrata Dutta, chairman of the Indian Football Association (IFA) which runs the sport in West Bengal.

Only one tier of the league, which began in 1898, will be held now but there are plans to start the seven-team Premier Division B soon, said IFA president Ajit Banerjee. Players and staff must have had at least one shot of Covid-19 vaccine to be eligible, said Banerjee.

The league will be named after Sister Nivedita University (SNU) which on Monday signed a deal with IFA to bankroll five competitions. The deal is renewable every year, said Satyam Roychowdhury, the university’s chancellor and founder and managing director of the Techno India Group. IFA Shield, an inter-school competition, an inter-college event and the women’s league will be the other competitions with which SNU will be associated, said Dutta.

The fixtures released so far till August 28 don’t feature either ATK Mohun Bagan or SC East Bengal. Bagan are away in Male for the AFC Cup and have asked for time, said Banerjee. And East Bengal are in a long-drawn dispute with investors Shree Cement over their terms of agreement. “But neither has said they won’t play in the league,” said the IFA president.

The Premier Division A continues the gradual resumption of football across India after many states, including Delhi, held a qualifying competition for the I-League second division qualifiers scheduled in Bengaluru in October. 29 teams from 19 states have applied to take part in the second division qualifiers, said All India Football Federation Leagues’ CEO Sunando Dhar.

Football Delhi president Shaji Prabhakaran said he is hopeful of a full season of the four-division Delhi league with games starting in the last week of September. Kerala and Goa were among the states which completed the 2020-21 season.

The Kolkata league will kick-off the season in Bengal which will also host the 130th Durand Cup from September 5 to October 3. Sixteen teams including four from the armed forces and six each from the Indian Super League and I-League are supposed to play.