As Mohun Bagan SG prepare for their fourth ISL Cup final in five years, there's an unspoken question swirling around Indian football fans' conversations: Who are Mohun Bagan, really? Are they the attacking superpower that have blitzed scoring records, both individual and team, through the season? Or are they a defensive unit wearing out their opponents, a "boring" side winning by attrition and by the simple expedient of playing at 110 percent till the final whistle? Or are they both -- and, if so, how do they reconcile these two sides of their personality? And, ultimately, does it matter at all as long to anyone but the football aesthete?
Over the course of the day in Kolkata, through conversations with players, coaches and fans, this reporter tried to get answers. Here's what we found.
*****
First, the stats.
No club has scored more than their 50 goals this season. Even if we adjust it to per-game numbers to take out the added playoff games, they're at 1.92 goals-per-game, clear on top. Only one team have created more than their 288 chances or taken more than their 309 shots at goal. They've not had one scorer doing the bulk of the scoring -- from centre-forward Jamie Maclaren to left-back Subhasish Bose there are five players who've scored five or more goals. It's not just a lot of wealth, it's well distributed wealth: what's not to like about that most egalitarian approach?
They've changed formation to suit the demands of the match, to hit the specific weaknesses of different opponents. They've gone 4-1-4-1 with attack-minded Apuia the lone defensive presence in midfield. They've gone 4-4-2 with six forward players who like to bomb forward. They've done 4-4-1-1, and even 3-5-2 (especially in the Durand Cup, pre-ISL). They've done good old 4-2-3-1. There's variety in formation, unpredictability in tactics, and goals seemingly coming from everywhere.
For all the goals they've scored, though, they are a very defense first team. Nobody in the division even comes close to the 16 clean sheets they've kept, nor the 16 (+2 playoff) goals they've conceded all season. It's a remarkable record, worthy of high praise, but one achieved at times by simply grinding the life out of a game. How do they win, then, you ask? They simply outlast everyone in their path (and they do it through sheer depth of squad quality, mostly.)
22 of their 50 goals have come from set-pieces, and many of them have come late on in games where they've created chances but hardly any good ones. Take the second leg of their semifinal against bus-parking Jamshedpur. They broke all sorts of all-time ISL records in the game -- most final third passes (259), most penalty area entries (71), joint-most shots (35), most shots by a single player (Jason Cummings, 10). Instead of cutting through the low block with quick incisive passes or chaotic movement, what they essentially did was hammer and hammer and hammer till even Jamshedpur steel cracked. It was brutally effective, but for a dispassionate viewer not all that aesthetically pleasing.
*****
What do the coaches think?
In the pre-match press conference, Bengaluru FC head coach Gerard Zaragoza waxed eloquent on the primal reason for playing this sport -- to make people happy. "If we can score as many goals as possible, and them also, it will be perfect. If we can, one goal more than them. We can finish 5-4, that's better than 1-0. We play football for the people. The people outside have a lot of problems, a lot, they even cannot pay for one ticket to enter [sometimes]. The people who came every single match... these people deserve good football; deserve nice football tomorrow. So as much goals as we can score, the better."
When the same question was put to his opposite number, Jose Molina, his reply was instructive. "I agree with Gerard. Some part. We play for the people [yes], we have to make them happy, to enjoy football. But, in my opinion our fans are happy when we win."
Win. It's what Mohun Bagan do. It's what they've been doing since 1911, whatever be the letters prefixed or suffixed to their name. Win. It's all the Bagan faithful care about, really.
"If we don't win, it doesn't matter how we play, they are not happy," says Molina. "What we have to try to do is to win. 1-0, 5-4, 2-0, doesn't matter how much, the most important thing is to do is to win, to make them happy."
*****
As the cliché goes, though, it's all about the beholder. And no one associated with Bagan even remotely cares about any of this.
As a fan of many, many years Sarin Bhattacharya tells this writer outside the Salt Lake... "what does it matter how we score?"
"Actually," he says, "the culture in Bengal football is that we expect every match to be won. That's a basic thing... even if a match is drawn, we wonder how poorly we've played, what could the coach have done differently. As long as we are winning... [shrugs]. Winning is a good habit, and every match we win, we feel joy.
"Winning is the only thing."
*****
The players are on the same wavelength as coach and fans.
Apuia came in as a big money signing from Mumbai City where he had been a very attack minded central midfielder. Many a times here, he's had to play the role of a lone defensive midfielder. He's adapted, and the rare stunner aside (hello again, Jamshedpur), he's learnt to curb his natural instincts and help control the play the way Molina's Bagan like to.
The priority, he says, is to "keep the clean sheet first and [then] score goal(s). So instead of taking risks, we keep it safe first, and then try to win the match."
It's a simple philosophy and the results speak for themselves.
It's not just further back on the pitch either. Jamie Maclaren is Bagan's top scorer and the kind of out-and-out centre forward who only understands the language of goals. At Bagan, though, he's learned to see the other side.
"Obviously as a striker," he says, "you always just want to naturally create more chances... but we've been so well balanced that... when you've got clean sheets and you see how happy your defence are, you see how happy the keepers are, how happy the coaches [are, it's great]. Whether we win 1-0 or 2-0, as an attacker you take three points.
"The team comes first and that's one thing that Mohun Bagan have always shown -- that the team comes first, the individual accolades come second, and you can see that throughout the, across the board in our team"
He says, "We haven't lost too many this year," before unknowingly echoing Sarin, and the Bagan fandom with him: "winning becomes a habit and when you get that habit, the confidence throws throughout the dressing room and it's a positive place, a confident place."
Doesn't it bother him, though, the potential tag of 'boring?'
"You obviously hear it, you see it, it's outside noise, but you know... winning isn't boring."
*****
At the end of the day, it's that simple. Winning = happiness, across the board on the winning side. Why does it matter how? When asked if he would prefer to play a park-the-bus Jamshedpur or a more adventurous Bengaluru FC type team, coach Molina simply said, "I prefer to be here."
Here. In the final. A chance to win a trophy. A shot at glory. History beckoning. That's the kind of thing that keeps Mohun Bagan going, the kind of thing that raises a tingle down the spines of those in maroon and green, and that happens regardless of the passage of time or changes in football philosophy. Too bad if you don't like it.
Like Sarin says, "style of play matters, but it's more important to win trophies." Mohun Bagan are on the cusp of winning yet another one -- and they don't care what you think about the way they go about doing it.