We die each day, which was why the black day, when it came, wasn't really all that chromatically different from all the others that had preceded or succeeded it. It wasn't as if we were calling a spade a shovel when we said the All India Football Federation's two-year ban on Mohun Bagan - for pulling out of a December I-League derby – was being sought to be scuttled by means of behind-the-scenes deals with multi-level influence-peddling. And if you happen to know just how rich Mohun Bagan president Tutu Bose is - not that the knowledge will enrich you in any way - a wry smile was what you must have permitted yourself when, earlier this week, the AIFF revoked the ban but wanted everyone to believe they were putting the club through the wringer by slapping them with a Rs 2 crore fine.
As turn-around go, this one was rather spectacular. Just a little more than a month ago, everyone was convinced Mohun Bagan had truly had it. And then, all of a sudden, they were cocking a snook at the rule book and those who held it in their hands. Where the AIFF was concerned, it was the somersault to end all somersaults. It felt like the football federation's supreme boss had been persuaded to subscribe to a school of thought which advocated walking head down.
The dramatic impact of the altered decision could be likened to the sun, in a departure from its everyday habit, rising in the West. "The crucial matter in the entire business," says someone in the know of things, "was a Monday meeting when AIFF chief Praful Patel hosted Bose, who probably runs more businesses than he knows, and his - Bose's, and not Patel's - son, Srinjoy. No one else was destined to know what would transpire, and no one did." There were also those who said Bose, the senior one, had long known Patel, though they duly acknowledged that such familiarity only facilitated, and stopped short of making the impossible, possible. Clinching it presumably calls for tangible add-ons. Big people inside the ruling body emphatically deny murky transactions but can't explain why a two-year hibernation came to be wiped out just like that. "I doubtfully went along with Patel's point of view," says a very, very senior fellow in the organization.
The AIFF, its volte-face complete by then, was saying the ban had been "harsh," and everything, ranging from the club's hallowed history to the Bengali community's putative emotional distress that the threat of that long an ouster had caused, was cited in explaining and justifying the U-turn. "Truth to tell, we had been in regular and necessarily informal communication with the AIFF ever since it had imposed the ban on us," said a Mohun Bagan-insider, neatly skirting a question about predictable temptations bringing about the swing, as alleged virtually in so many words by East Bengal. "The ban-lifting decision was the AIFF executive committee's," said I-League chief executive officer Sunando Dhar, probably implying it had taken more than money to turn things around. Which may be where political influence played a part. A very well-placed East Bengal official said West Bengal's Trinamool Congress had played a very crucial role in pulling off the rollback. "When the matter was eventually put before the panel, no one said no to the president," said an AIFF-insider, which was another way of making it clear that the boys in the league knew they were not expected to rebel. "Only the Manipur representative made a squeak or two about the lifting of the ban," says another source, adding: "And Patel was pretty confident he'd be supported by most members of the executive committee." Subservience is as subservience does. That leads, inevitably and inexorably, to the very simple question: wasn't anyone anywhere thinking of what the AIFF was thus letting itself in for in revoking a penalty it had announced in the none too distant past? If so much cash is all you have to part with after deliberately walking out of a game with more than 100,000 people looking on from the stands, what about its institutional credibility? If your rules state that a team pulling out of a game cop the punishment that Mohun Bagan did but you're forever ready to shake hands and move on if the guilty ones cough up, who among your constituent units are going to take you seriously? But that's hardly all there was to it.
Since there always perhaps can be an element of doubt about the executive committee's endorsement of decisions taken basically unilaterally at high levels of its hierarchy, word is the AIFF will now change its constitution to make sure the party line can't be strayed from by anyone.
Abandon all hope...