[caption id="attachment_5527" align="alignnone" width="580"]Ranty-Martins For the second time an I League derby will be played outside Kolkata. Image Source: Xtra Time[/caption] Internet Desk: It will be the 314th occasion when Mohun Bagan will take on arch rivals East Bengal in the  derby at Siliguri on April 2nd (Saturday). This will be the first time an I-league derby will be played in Siliguri. In fact it will be the second time that a derby will be played in North Bengal district. Only occasion the two rivals met each other in Siliguri was in an Airlines Gold Cup match in 1988 which ended in a 1-1 draw. Satyajit Chatterjee was the scorer for Bagan while Chima Okorie added his name on the score sheet for East Bengal. The Siliguri derby will be the 38th derby in the I-league/NFL. The last time the Kolkata two giants met in an I-league derby outside Kolkata was in Goa in 1999. Both teams had to be content with a 1-1 draw. Jo Paul Ancheri was the scorer for the Mariners while Swarup Das scored for Red and Golds. East Bengal have a slight edge over Mohun Bagan when it comes to I-League/NFL derby with the Red and Golds winning it on 14 occasions while Mohun Bagan have won 11 times. The remaining 12 matches between them ended in draws. Till now in the NFL/I-league, East Bengal has scored 41 goals while Mohun Bagan has scored 32 goals. Jose Ramirez Barreto is the highest individual scorer for Bagan with 7 goals while Bhaichung Bhutia has scored 6 goals in total, 2 for East Bengal and 4 for Mohun Bagan. Syed Rahim Nabi has scored 4 goals for East Bengal. Let us have a look at some important facts on derby. 1) The two teams met for the first time in 1925, when East Bengal won the fixture 1-0. Nepal Chakraborty walked into the history books by scoring the first goal in a derby. Mona Dutta was the skipper of the winning side. 2) The 100th derby was played on December 16, 1967 during the Rovers Cup final, in which East Bengal defeated Mohun Bagan 2-0. 3) The 200th match between the arch rivals was the Airlines Gold Cup final in April 1993. Mohun Bagan managed to win it 6-5, courtesy a tie-break. 4) The 300th meeting between the two sides was in a championship-leg encounter of the Calcutta Football League's premier division held on January 8, 2012. Nigerian Okolie Odafa and Manish Bhargav scored as the Mariners sealed the game 2-0 in their favour. 5) The highest margin of win is the famous 5-0 victory of East Bengal on 30th September, 1975. But it is unknown to many that Shyam Thapa had missed a penalty for the Red and Gold in that match. Had he scored from the spot in the 11th minute, it would have been the worst humiliation for their arch rivals. Ashok Banerjee was the skipper of the winning side. 6) A fatal pandemonium occurred in the derby on 16th August, 1980 taking a toll of 16 young lives. This marks the darkest day of Indian football. As the referee gave Dilip Palit and Bidesh Basu the marching orders in the second half, the gallery burst into agitation. A stampede at the Eden Gardens resulted in the disaster. 7) A record 1, 31,000 spectators came to watch the derby on 13th July, 1997. The turnout is the largest for a derby so far. East Bengal won the match 4-1 with Bhaichung scoring a hat-trick, while Najimul Haque opening the account for Red and Golds. Chima Okorie reduced the deficit for the Green and Maroons. 8) Chidi Edeh is the first foreigner to score a hat-trick in the derby. Chidi also holds the record of scoring the maximum number of goals in a single match. He had put the ball into the net four times in Bagan’s 5-3 rout over East Bengal on 25th October, 2009. Manish Maithani scored the other goal for the Mariners. 9) Bhaichung Bhutia has scored the maximum number of goals in the derby. Among his 19 goals, he scored 13 goals for East Bengal, while the other six was scored for Mohun  Bagan. Jose Ramirez Barreto comes a close second with 17 goals. The Brazilian scored all his goals for the Mariners, which obviously is the highest number of goals for a particular side by a single player in the derby. 10) Only four players have captained both the sides: Goutam Sarkar, Prashanta Banerjee, Dulal Biswas and Renedy Singh. An interesting similarity is that all four had been the captain of the East Bengal side first and then went on to lead the Bagan side in later parts of their career.    

Do You Know: 10 Interesting Facts about Derby