Kolkata: It has been the longest and perhaps strangest Indian Super League season. As the dust settles on it with Saturday’s grand finale at the Salt Lake Stadium here, the order in India’s domestic football has already been established. Mohun Bagan SG and Mumbai City FC have emerged truly and decisively as the best in business. Nineteen days after Antonio Lopez Habas’s green-and-maroon brigade pipped the rivals from Mumbai to their maiden Winners’ Shield, they are back again, this time the championship title being up for grabs.
There will be more at stake, however and expect fireworks.
As Mumbai’s Spanish midfielder Alberto Noguera said at the pre-match press conference: “This is revenge for us. It’s an opportunity to show who we are.”
Habas does not usually indulge himself in any such hyperbole. But the veteran Spaniard — the lone managerial survivor of the league since its inception a decade ago — made it clear how he was being driven by the sense of the occasion to “complete the circle” — of winning the ISL Shield and playoff trophy in the same season.
Mumbai City remain the sole owner of this honour. When they achieved this feat back in the 2020-21 season, Habas — then standing as ATK Mohun Bagan coach — ended up getting the wrong end of the stick on both occasions.
Having finished the league on top, Habas is certainly salivating at the prospect of crossing the finishing line once more. It could also be a boundary-obliterating push for him as no team has managed to defend the ISL title and a Shield-Cup ‘double’ will brighten the halo around his managerial accomplishments.
Habas and his opposite number in the Mumbai camp Petr Kratky, however, stressed that it will be a different ball game on Saturday, with its own nature of unpredictability
Mumbai, though, are keen on learning from that 1-2 defeat in the league’s grand finale here on April 15 and getting even with the new Shield-winners. “It’s a special game for us. We know what qualities Mohun Bagan possess but we like to be more proactive with our passing and control the game this time around,” their coach Kratky said.
When two attacking teams come on a collision path, expect certain patterns to emerge. Both teams flourish in attacking width with wing-backs shaping the team’s strategy in slicing open the rival defence. The key to the tie is likely to lie in how they go about using the space behind. Mohun Bagan’s Manvir Singh or Liston Colaco and Mumbai City’s Lallianzuala Chhangte, Bipin Singh or Jayesh Rane are known for ‘hugging’ the line, ready to raise their pace to a gallop. Such is the intensity of the system that no player can afford to be isolated, especially during transition when the contest can be won or lost.
Apart from Armando Sadiku, Mohun Bagan have all players available. Mumbai will miss Dutch midfielder Yoell van Nieff through suspension and Akash Sharma through injury.
Habas and Kratky — having assumed charge in the second half of the league — have imbued their respective team with the feel of a juggernaut. So much about the concept that changing managers in the middle of the season is more about stemming the slide than gunning for glory.
Mumbai have lost twice to Bagan at the Salt Lake Stadium this season — in the Durand Cup quarterfinals and ISL Shield-decider. Bagan will again enjoy a full house. Can they bring the house down again? Or will Mumbai return to the razzle-dazzle in this rivalry?
No quarter will be asked. No mercy will be shown. With the city in the grip of an unprecedented heat wave, expect both teams trying to catch each other cold.