The city that argues about football

Founded in 1889 in a north Calcutta house, and named for the garden the founders met in. For its first two decades it was a club of the Bengali professional class playing a game the army had brought.

On 29 July 1911 it beat East Yorkshire Regiment 2–1 in the IFA Shield final. The Indian team played barefoot against booted opposition. Shibdas Bhaduri captained, and the political reading of the result was immediate and enormous.

It is historically the club of West Bengal families, the ghotis, as against East Bengal's bangals. That distinction hardened after 1947 and is still the first thing anyone tells you.

The club was given National Club of India status in 1889's centenary year, and 29 July is observed as Mohun Bagan Day.

Founded on 1 August 1920 by Suresh Chandra Chaudhuri, after a player from the eastern districts was left out of a Jorabagan side and the selectors would not explain why.

It became the club of people from East Bengal, and after 1947 the club of the refugee population that settled the southern and eastern edges of the city. That is not a marketing story; it is demographic history.

In 1970 it beat Pas Club of Iran 1–0 in the IFA Shield final in front of a crowd that shut central Calcutta. Its run of five consecutive Calcutta League titles in the 1970s remains the benchmark.

The hilsa fish is the club's food symbol against Mohun Bagan's prawn, and on derby day the market prices move with the expected result.

Founded in 1891, and by the 1930s the strongest side in the country. Between 1934 and 1938 it won five consecutive Calcutta Football League titles, and in 1934 became the first Indian club to win the league at all.

That side played barefoot and beat the British regimental teams routinely. Its support was drawn from across the Muslim communities of Bengal and beyond, and its matches carried a political charge in the 1930s that the other two did not.

It won the IFA Shield in 1936 and the Durand and Rovers Cups in 1940, the first Indian club to take either.

It has spent long periods outside the top division and returned to the Indian Super League era through the I-League, which the older supporters regard as overdue rather than surprising.