Category: Featured Stories

The floodlights at Khuman Lampak Main Stadium haven’t even flickered on yet, and already the day’s business is done in a dozen other places. On scrubby neighbourhood pitches, in school playgrounds, on patches of open ground squeezed between houses, the first games of the morning are already under way before Imphal has properly woken up.… Continue reading Where football lives – Why Durand Cup feels at home in Imphal

It was the 71st minute, and the air inside the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan hung heavy, with the suffocating humidity of late summer and an unbearable tension. The date was September 3, 2023. Mohun Bagan Super Giant had been reduced to ten men after Anirudh Thapa’s expulsion near the hour mark. Across the pitch, East… Continue reading East Bengal, Mohun Bagan, and their Durand Legacy

There is a photograph from the 1993 Durand Cup that Bengal football still passes around like folklore, a teenager, airborne, boot connecting with a ball he never should have reached. Bhaichung Bhutia’s bicycle kick against Border Security Force lasted about a second. The story of how he got onto that pitch took considerably longer. East… Continue reading The Durand Cup: Before the World knew their NAMES

In the annals of Indian sport, few tournaments possess the history and prestige of the Durand Cup. Established in 1888, it has witnessed the evolution of football in the country across more than a century, surviving wars, political change and the transformation of the domestic game itself. Through every era, however, the tournament has remained… Continue reading Rooted in Kolkata, Reaching Five States: The Durand Cup’s Modern Expansion

On a winter afternoon in 1940, Delhi witnessed a football match unlike anything it had seen before. Long before kick-off at the Irwin Amphitheatre, the roads leading to the stadium had begun to fill. Supporters arrived by train, tongas and on foot, drawn by the Durand Cup final between Mohammedan Sporting Club of Calcutta and… Continue reading The Durand Cup: 138 Years, One enduring story