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Wake-up call for Mohun Bagan?
They can recover from the hiding in the Durand Cup final but will have little time if the season starts on October 10
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The signs of a turnaround were evident when Jose Molina met journalists for a rare roundtable in the Mohun Bagan Super Giant media room. By early November 2024, when the interaction happened, Mohun Bagan had put behind them the 0-3 defeat at Bengaluru FC, a result Molina accepted had forced a change in team composition. “Because we were suffering and I had to do something,” he said.
In that chastening loss, Mohun Bagan had started with former Australia strikers Dimi Petratos and Jason Cummings, Greg Stewart as wide left and Tommy Aldred in central defence. After that match, Aldred and Alberto Rodriguez became an unshakeable central defensive pairing with Stewart as No.10 and Jamie Maclaren as the lone striker.
The tweak worked. Mohun Bagan won the ISL double, winning the league shield by eight points before defeating Bengaluru FC in the final.
Suffering again
Mohun Bagan are suffering again after a hiding to nothing in the Durand Cup final and it will have to be seen what Panagiotis Dilmperis changes between now and October 10 when a new, full season of the Indian Super League (ISL) is likely to start with 13 teams. “Are you sure when the season will start?” the handsome Greek asked in response to my question about how important the season’s second Kolkata derby was given that it was in a pre-season tournament.
By the time of the pre-final media conference, letters had been sent to clubs asking them to book home stadia from October to April-May. Dilmperis may or may not have known that when he spoke about the need for an eight-nine week preparation with focus on fitness, tactics, technique and mentality. Four first-half goals were proof that Mohun Bagan will need to work on all of that. They will have only around four weeks because of the 16-day international break.
Between games in the Durand Cup, teams got little time to train. Mohun Bagan also had issues travelling from Shillong after the semi-final and that can take its toll when players are returning from off-season. Maybe that explains why Lalengmawia Ralte, Samir Zeljkovic, Jamie Maclaren and Miguel Ferreira looked listless.
With 10 goals in the 2025-26 half-season and 12 in the one prior, Maclaren has shown why he is the new A-League highest scorer ever (154 goals). A tame attempt in the 90th minute that left the 2018 and 2022 Australia World Cup player shaking his head summed up his evening. A seventh-minute shot, equally tame, was how it had begun.
Ralte was slower than Edmund Lalrindika when the East Bengal attacker completed his hattrick, his foul having led to the free-kick. His losing possession in the middle led to the second. Ralte can cover a lot of ground, has defensive awareness and has been an automatic selection for India, so this can be a one-off match.
Introduced in the second half, Ferreira received the treatment Newcastle fans had reserved for Alexander Isak in Premier League’s first weekend.
Can Dilmperis get his team to do what Luis Enrique has said he seeks from Paris St-Germain after they escaped to a draw in the Ligue 1 opener: get players out of their comfort zone? Long-term contracts provide stability to players and clubs but it can also mean stagnation, especially when the players’ pool is small. Ralte still has three years left on his contract.
Marooned in midfield
Maclaren and Ferreira tend to be uninvolved especially when out of possession. A slow, ageing backline – Rahul Bheke is 35, Rodriguez 33 and Subhasish Bose 31 – meant Mohun Bagan could not play higher up the pitch. Without help from back or front, the double pivot of Ralte and Anirudh Thapa was marooned in the middle. With their wing backs staying high up the pitch, East Bengal could run through vacant space in the middle.
But did Mohun Bagan get the midfield composition right? Why start Zeljkovic as No.10 when he is more comfortable as a defensive midfielder or central defender? Had he played deeper, Sahal Abdul Samad, who scored five goals in the Durand Cup including one in the derby, could have started.
Compared to the options in wide players and in attack (the club has signed another striker in Lee Erwin), Mohun Bagan look light in defence and central midfield. Like Chelsea under Roman Abramovich, they tend to choose players first before appointing the head coach. Will there be additions to the roster or will Dilmperis, like Molina, find a way?
Important as it is to avoid over-reaction, it needs to be pointed out that for all the excellent work Dilmperis did at Punjab FC promoting young players, he does not have the aura of a winning coach. Antonio Lopez Habas has that in spades.
That is no deterrent to Dilmperis winning trophies this term but for every Bayern Munich that takes a punt on Vincent Kompany, there is a Real Madrid that goes back to Jose Mourinho and a Chelsea that hire Xabi Alonso.
Mohun Bagan had more chances and not always will everything East Bengal do in attack click. But it did on Sunday and that can mean only one thing for the club that has dominated ISL since joining in 2020: pressure. Managing Mohun Bagan is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Dilmperis has said. But, if not a poisoned chalice, it can also be an experience that can leave one scarred.
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