ATKMB to be renamed as Mohun Bagan Super Giant from 1st June 2023

ATK Mohun Bagan lifted the ISL Trophy last season.

ATK Mohun Bagan will officially be recognised as Mohun Bagan Super Giant, from the 1st of June 2023. The decision was taken by the board of the club, and the club disclosed this important news on its twitter handle, on the 17th of May.

The news was at first shared by ATK Mohun Bagan owner Sanjeev Goenka a few months ago, on the 18th of March, when the sky was lit up by fireworks, as the Mariners were being carved onto the ISL Trophy for the very first time. 

“From next season the club will be known as Mohun Bagan Super Giant. We were waiting for the [ISL final] win to announce it,” Sanjeev Goenka had said after the final.

The contentious reasoning behind this decision

While one would argue as to why just 3 years after its creation, the club has made such an important decision of renaming its identity, the reason behind it is much deeper.

Ever since the merger of ATK and Mohun Bagan, which finally led to the creation of ATK Mohun Bagan, there had been a raging treatment by the Mohun Bagan fans, regarding the name of the club. The argument was raised around the prefix ATK in the name of the club, which according to the Mohun Bagan fans, is an incursion on their club’s identity. 

Due to this very reason, a number of protests were staged against the club’s owner Sanjeev Goenka, who drew the ire of the Mariners when they branded their deal with Mohun Bagan as a ‘merger of two clubs’. Banners reading ‘Goenka Out’ and ‘Remove ATK’ were also seen in the Mariners’ home games.

As a result of this constant dissent by the fans, the decision was made by the board.