Mohun Bagan have won their 17th Durand Cup trophy after a 1-0 win over arch derby rivals East Bengal in the final of the 2023 edition. A 71st minute Dimi Petratos goal was enough for Bagan, who played with 10 men for just under half-an-hour.
Petratos goal came against the run of play. Ten minutes previously Anirudh Thapa had been sent off after getting a second yellow for a pretty poor challenge on Javier Siverio, and East Bengal had taken complete control of the match. This was a period in which EB had their best chance of the match, Cleiton Silva forcing Vishal Kaith into a diving save with a snapshot from the edge of the box. If the first half had been a dull affair (just 1 shot each, neither anywhere near the target), the second half was shaping up as well and truly EB's. But the good work was undone by some rather tentative defending.
Petratos took up the ball deep in the EB half before running forward on the counter. Inexplicably the EB midfield and defence stood off him, dropping deeper and deeper as Petratos raced forward. Taking the obvious invitation he toe-poked a powerful drive at goal, which took a slight deflection off defender Jose Pardo and flew well wide of a diving Prabhsukhan Singh Gill.
Once the goal went in, EB seemingly lost all composure. Simple passes were misplaced, dribbles ended in cul-de-sacs and as Bagan packed the centre of the field they found little joy down the middle. A repeated pattern from that moment on, including the ten additional minutes that were played at the end, was someone in a red and yellow shirt floating in harmless cross after harmless cross straight into the hands of Kaith. Harmanjot Khabra, Nishu Kumar, Mandar Rao Desai - all experienced heads - were the primary guilty parties.
Bagan simply held on, rode their luck on occasions (especially when Nandhakumar Shekar sent an open header straight at Kaith from four yards out), and kept their calm as their opponents lost theirs.
You can relive all the action with the minute-by-minute commentary as-it-happened, right here: (The live blog will appear below this. Please wait a few seconds for it to load. Please click here if it doesn't)