Kolkata: Terming the incident involving East Bengal footballer’s train journey yesterday as unfortunate, Mohun Bagan club’s finance secretary Debasish Dutta has demanded a prove into the whole fiasco. Six East Bengal footballers’s including National team defender Arnab Mondal, Narayan Das and Mehtab Hossain returned home with unreserved train tickets, sparking widespread controversy in the football fraternity here.
According to Mohun Bagan finance secretary Debasish Dutta, “Players of the caliber of Arnab Mondal, Mehtab Hossain returning in train is not a good advertisement for football. The entire incident needs to be investigated so that the exact truth comes out.”
He added, “The club officials need to find out who gave them the permission to leave for Kolkata. We also got a similar request from our Coach Sanjay Sen and Sony Norde, to come back to Kolkata in the morning. Accordingly we arranged for two tickets on a priority basis. Since our coach had some personal commitments we allowed him to return to Kolkata. But we requested Norde to stay back and come with the team on the same flight.”
The Mohun Bagan finance secretary also demanded an enquiry whether manager Manoranjan Bhattacharya did give permission to the players or not. “I came to know that they (footballers) got permission from the manager. The player’s plying their trade for the big clubs like East Bengal and Mohun Bagan have a star value. It not only tarnished their image but also brought the football fraternity to shame.”
The players were returning to Kolkata after representing East Bengal in the Federation Cup tournament at Cuttack. Travelling without reservation has its own perils and Narayan Das was seen sitting on his kit bag next to the lavatory of the Jan Shatabdi Express. The pictures of the footballer’s travelling in train went viral and the social media was flooded with messages from the fans of both clubs.
All the footballers including goalkeeping coach Abhijit Mondal has been summoned by the club’s top officials today at the club, seeking an explanation as to why they had to travel in a train with unreserved tickets.
According to a senior footballer, professional commitments forced three well-known Indian footballers, representing East Bengal at the club level, to travel in a general train compartment.
According to team manager and former India defender Manoranjan Bhattacharya, they had arranged a bus after finding that all flights were full.
But former India international Mehtab and current players Mondal, Das, Mohmmad Rafique, Subhasish Roy Chowdhury and goalkeeping coach Abhijit Mondal decided to take the first train back home without reservation.
East Bengal were shown the door by arch-rivals Mohun Bagan with a 0-2 defeat in the semifinals last evening.