East Bengal initiative targets all Bengal districts & the NE
Times of India | 13 July 2025
Kolkata: East Bengal club has embarked on an ambitious mission to take the beautiful game to different parts of the country and scout for young talents through a grassroots programme. The initiative — named East Bengal School of Excellence and launched in a city hotel on Friday — primarily aims at covering all districts of Bengal and parts of the North-east region. The club will form partnerships with local schools in a particular region and provide them with expert coaching, advanced training techniques and sports science. "For the game to develop in a vast country like India, we need to reach out to every possible talent pool and catch them young. The East Bengal School of Excellence will be ready to provide all necessary teaching and technical expertise against minimum expenses if a school or an association of a particular region wants to develop players and seek our assistance. We've visited all districts in the state and the North-east region and they are keen to be a part of our programme," senior East Bengal official Debabrata Sarkar said.
"We want sports to co-exist with education," he added. Former India internationals like Bhaskar Gangly and Prasanta Banerjee hailed the initiative as "something unheard of" in Indian sporting landscape. "This will be an ideal platform for budding sportspersons," former India women's cricket team captain Jhulan Goswami said. East Bengal have been running the school for almost three decades at the club tent and the strength of their present students is about 300. EB rally to hold Customs 2-2 in CFL: East Bengal FC came back from a two-goal deficit to hold Calcutta Customs 2-2 in their CFL Premier Division match at the Kalyani stadium on Saturday. Although East Bengal started well, Bino George's side found itself trailing by two goals within 22 minutes. First, defender Chaku Mandi felled Customs forward Sumay Shome inside the box and Shlok Tiwari converted the resultant penalty in the 18th minute. Four minutes later, Sourav Sen made it 2-0 for Biswajit Bhattacharya's Customs, providing the perfect finish to Ricki Gharami's pass. George introduced striker Jeson TK soon after that and carried out two more changes in his line-up after the break, bringing in Sayan Banerjee and Ananthu N. Ananthu reduced the margin in the 61st minute, heading home a Jeson centre and defender Pravat Lakra drove home to make it 2-2 10 minutes later following a Naseeb Rahman pass. This was East Bengal's second draw in a row after starting their campaign with a 7-1 drubbing of Measurers Club.