13th July 1997 is a historic day for Indian Football. We all know about diamond demolition, we all know about the crowd and we know about the tactical battle that happened between the two most distinguished coaches in the history of Indian football. This is my humble attempt of recapturing those tactical details that has been etched on the memory of every football lover Bengal.
I will try to do that. I am sure I will be wrong mostly. Feel free to rectify and discuss.
First Mohun Bagan: The mariners fielded the team in 3-2-3-2 formation which in possession became 3-4-3.
pic1: The diamond midfield
Ranjan Dey, Alok Das and James Odiembo formed the last 3 in the defense. Young Debjit Ghosh played the role of defensive medio while his veteran partner Satyajit Chatterjee played the role of deep lying playmaker creating all the moves from behind and controlling the pace of the game. The midfield three was formed by Amit Das, Basudeb Mondal and Lollendra Singh. The attacking pair was the devastating Chima along with superfast Abdul Khalek. Amit Das though started as a winger will tuck in to provide the diamond shape in the midfield while Khalek and Lollendra will provide the width.
Pic2: Lollendra using the flanks
Sometimes Khalek will drift inwards then Amit will hold the wing. From the defensive trio one will overlap into the midfield to support the defensive medios. The general plan was to overload the midfield and confuse the opponents. When a man from the diamond moves up one from the back will take his place and thus the shape will remain intact. The 3-4-3 diamond had a few advantages and disadvantages. In one hand it was versatile, highly attacking and beautiful formation. Bagan players played a lot of quick passes with rapid interchanging of positions making it very difficult to tract any single player. With the overload in the midfield they almost always had 7-8 players in opponent half thus making it very attacking system.
On the flip side the high defensive line and the narrow defensive system left huge spaces in the flanks and in behind the defense which was very ably exploited by the Red and Gold players. We will come to that later.
East Bengal: The Red and Gold brigade fielded a traditional 4-4-2 formation. The coach P.K Banerjee made some changes in his starting eleven. First to control the physicality and the aerial threat of Chima he fielded Azande, a big bodied custodian. This proved to be a masterstroke as Azande had a gem of a game. Secondly he fielded Dulal Biswas and Amitabha Chanda, two young and dynamic wingbacks in place of more experienced Ilias Pasha and Falguni Dutta. The central defense was formed by Sammy Ommollo and Naushad Musah. The central midfield pair was Tushar Rakshit and Sankarlaal Chakrabarty with Sankarlaal taking more defensive role. To counter the midfield supremacy of Bagan PK put his two wingers Soso and Abdul Sadik into more central positions thus making a compact defensive midfield.
pic3: Compact Red and Gold midfield with Soso tucking in
With the advance of the game Soso will drift towards the wing to exploit the spaces. Bhaichung was partnered by young Nazimul upfront. Nazimul was put to provide width in the wing while Bhaichung was playing more centrally making runs behind the defense. East Bengal had a definite plan to withstand the Bagan onslaught in the first quarter of the game keeping the defense compact. Later they tried to exploit the weaknesses in the Bagan defense. From the beginning the tried to slow down the pace of the game playing short passes with sudden long balls behind the defense. This broke down the rhythm of Dutta’s team which played more free-flowing style.
Bagan as expected started stronger of the two attacking relentlessly but the Red and Gold defense was practically impenetrable. Naushad Musah did not allow Chima to turn and Sammy Omolo with his impeccable timing kept the threats at bay. Both Musa and Omolo were superb on air along with Azande denying Bagan any opportunity despite having numerous corners. Bagan midfield was dominating the proceeding with veteran Satyajit controlling from behind. Amit Das was troubling his friend Chanda a lot but lack of quality delivery let Bagan down in the first quarter of the match.
After first 12-15 mins East Bengal slowly started to open up and here Soso played a very vital role. He started to drift into empty spaces in the left flank and the narrow bagan defense was finding it very difficult to track him down. More so he was having a peach of a game with impeccable crosses and set pieces. He won most of his one to one battles against Amit and from two of his corners East Bengal got two goals.
Pic 4: Soso utilizing the empty spaces at flanks
Though this match is called diamond match but in my personal opinion the diamond was only for the first quarter of the game. After we scored the first goal all pretense of a diamond formation was lost. The mariners simply started to put more men upfront and opening up bigger gaps behind. After the first goal was scored Debjit and Ranjan joined the attack, keeping only Alok and Odiembo in the defense. The compact passing game was replaced by hopeful punts towards Chima and Khalek making it easy for East Bengal defense. After the second goal almost all the Bagan players moved up. The Bagan defense was so advanced at one time Bhaichung was called offside while being in our own half! PK was waiting for this. He replaced tiring Soso with Samsi Reja who had a good understanding with Bhaichung and they ran havoc in the Mohan Bagan defense scoring two more goals. In both the cases Bagan defender were in very advanced position to press the opponents but got caught in no man’s land on counter. In both cases East Bengal midfield won the ball close to box and put long ball forward behind the advanced Bagan defense. The biggest advantage of diamond system is it provides a good support for defense but that was completely absent on that day. It was just pushing men forward and getting caught on the counter.
Pic 5&6: High Bagan defense caught on the counter
P K Banerjee hit bull’s eye with his every move from the team line up to his player substitutions. Though this match is known as Bhaichung ‘s match two more players played very vital roles. One was Soso who ran riot in the left flank and making life miserable for Bagan defense. Second was Musa who nullified the threat of Chima barring one occasion. It was an almost perfect day for all East Bengalians. Apart from the tactics this match teaches us a few things. One, don’t underestimate your opponent however strong you may be and secondly with proper plan and hard work even seemingly impossible tasks can be made very easy. I have provided some pictures to accompany this analysis. Hope to get a discussion going.
