Kolkata: As Mohun Bagan and East Bengal are preparing to resume their rivalry this Sunday with the Indian Super League title up there for the taking, one could be tempted to go back to the very beginning of the country's top league three decades ago and reflect on how a new Mohun Bagan club president decided to turn the Big Two's usual ecosystem on its head.
When India welcomed its first National Football League — on Dec 17 in 1996 to be precise — Mohun Bagan's failure to qualify for the championship round came as a massive shock. Having assumed the club's charge as its president just a year ago, Swapan Sadhan Bose went about setting up a formidable team with a series of key transfers, including the one to coax Chima Okorie back to India from Denmark after the Nigerian goal-machine's three-year stint in Europe.
Against such a backdrop, Bagan's exit from the qualifying round of the inaugural NFL queered the pitch for the Bose-led new dispensation. It was at that time he took everyone by surprise with a unique gesture in the Big Two's big rivalry, allowing Chima to play for East Bengal on lien during the main round of the new league.
Breaking up the status quo had always been an integral part of Bose's DNA during his administrative reign at Mohun Bagan in various capacities for more than three decades.
When Mohun Bagan completed their centenary in 1989, it also brought an end to the club's unwritten rule of not allowing any foreigner to play for the team. However, with East Bengal basking in the glow of a rare triple crown of Indian football (IFA Shield, Durand Cup and Rovers Cup) in 1990, the green-and-maroon blood in Bose's veins revolted months after joining the club as an executive committee member and he single-handedly engineered the signing of Chima as Bagan's first ever overseas player in 1991 in a move which was still taken as an anathema but later considered as revolutionary in the club's history.
Perhaps, the transformation of Bose — from a young rebellious green-and-maroon faithful to a celebrated club administrator who would soon answer to the name of "Tutu-da" or "Tutu-babu" on the Maidan — had begun with that move. And soon he found in his chartered accountant friend and former secretary Anjan Mitra his comrade-in-arms and the duo went on to rule the club for over two decades, breaking one ground after another.
After the heartbreak of the inaugural year, Bose had his dream of becoming the best in India realized soon after, with Chima and Co. lifting the NFL crown in the league's next edition itself.
Once the floodgates were opened with Chima's arrival, the famed Tutu-Anjan administration was instrumental in bringing on board foreigners like Jose Ramirez Barreto and Sony Norde who would soon become part of the club's folklore. The club's trophy cabinet was also filled up with three NFL titles, two I-League crowns and innumerable domestic titles until Mitra died in 2019.
Bose, 79, breathed his last on Tuesday night at a city hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. It's truly an end-of-the-era feeling as he left an enduring and unmatched legacy, transcending the boundary of the game here.
A graduate from St Xavier's College, he went on to build a successful business career and founded Bengali daily Sangbad Pratidin. He also became a man in the political corridors, having served the Rajya Sabha as a Trinamool Congress MP.
But it was his unflinching love for football and Mohun Bagan club — which he once described as "my third son" after current club secretary Srinjoy and Soumik — which was the stuff for folklore. Having served the club as both its secretary and president, he was the quintessential Mr Dependable whenever the club plunged itself into a crisis or stared at transitional times — be it organizing a Rs 2 crore fine on way of bailing the club out of a two-year ban in 2012 to commercializing the football division by entering a landmark tie-up with the Vijay Mallya-led UB Group in 1998 to inking the historic deal to merge the club with ATK to form a new entity and play in the ISL in 2020.
"Tutu babu has served Mohun Bagan club in particular and football in general in so many ways that it's beyond anybody's thinking," former defender and captain Subrata Bhattacharya said, adding that "his legacy will live on."