East Bengal former CEO Sanjit Sen: We should've played Super Cup last year

Several jaw-dropping incidents have surfaced surrounding the Kolkata-based club in the recent days.

East Bengal FC's former CEO Sanjit Sen has opened up about some of the dubious decisions made by the management in the months leading up to their I-League campaign last year. That also includes decisions not to take cup competitions like the Durand Cup or Calcutta Football League seriously.

In an interview with EastMohun News, he spoke about the decision not to play in the Super Cup and how they made it in solidarity with the I-League clubs' rebellion back in 2019, even though he wanted them to participate.

Sen said, “The decision not to play in the Super Cup was mainly that made by Ajit Isaac (Chairman of Quess Corp). It’s because of the I-League rebellion back then. Personally I felt we should’ve played it and I had told Ajit about that as well.

"For me, a football team should keep its business inside the playing field. But he had made a commitment of not playing. We had a board meeting around March and agreed to play it before that final decision was made. But I felt we should’ve played it,” he added.

East Bengal were also accused of not taking their Calcutta Football League and Durand Cup campaigns seriously, often playing reserve players which felt the ire of the supporters. Sanjit Sen has explained about what happened in this ordeal, suggesting it was all ex-coach Alejandro Menendez’s decision to play the weakened teams.

“For Durand and CFL, Alejandro held talks with Ajit in March on whether we should play an experimental team or basically a mix and match between senior and junior players. After that he was to decide which players would make the ISL squad. Apparently in March there was a possibility to play in the ISL. When Alejandro spoke with me in July, I told him that there are sentiments regarding the centenary year this time and you just can’t field an U-19 team for the CFL."

“For Durand, the Army had made it clear that they would take a tough decision if we played a junior team, hence we had to play a proper senior team. Then we had a change of stance which caused a problem with Alejandro, but I convinced him to ultimately play with our best possible team. We had relayed out expectations to see strong teams in these competitions but whatever decision taken was ultimately the coach’s,” he went on to reveal.

The Red & Gold Brigaders also lost out on the CFL title after losing at home to Peerless SC, who would go onto become the champions. Sen spoke about how he had warned Alejandro to take this seriously, but the Spaniard made his own decisions.

He said, “Even in the morning of the Peerless game, where some unfortunate incidents happened, I had told Alejandro that this would be the title game. If we could’ve won that game, we could’ve taken a big leap forward in winning the CFL. But what team he chose was at the end was his own decision.”

Yet, the biggest disaster which happened was in the end of their 2019 CFL campaign, when East Bengal forfeited their game against Calcutta Customs on October 3 due to their players going off on holiday.

Sen explained the whole situation, saying, “When it comes to not playing the game against Calcutta Customs, a total administrative confusion had taken place. Alejandro wanted to play the game and we had no problem on whichever date the game was to take place. But when the game didn’t take place on the initial date, we had appropriately communicated that our players and coach had to return home for pre-season. We had given our players holiday for the time being."

"We had relayed to them that our players would’ve returned on 18-19th of October and if the game took place on 21st, that would be beneficial. We knew that Customs had their players till the end of the January window so we had proposed that change. But then the game was scheduled for when most of our players were already leaving for holiday. We tried even the night before the game to arrange an 18-man squad, but were unable to do so as everyone had gone home. It was a very unfortunate situation,” he said.

Now that East Bengal have had their players' contracts terminated a month earlier for the end of April, Quess Corporation will officially be packing up shop and end all ties with the club from next month. With the Red & Golds looking to play in the Indian Super League (ISL) next season, they need to accelerate their hunt for appropriate sponsors to help them do so.