SAIKAT DAS- THE NO. 1 GOALKEEPER OF MOHUN BAGAN NURSERY TEAM

Mohun Bagan Club is the National Club of India and from the very beginning of its journey this club has served Indian football a lot. Mohun Bagan has provided the opportunity to lots of young footballers all around India mainly from the football playing states to establish them in the national football arena. But that’s not enough for this famous club, so this club has also taken the responsibility to continue the supply line for Indian Football. They have their own academy at Durgapur in collaboration with SAIL and most important thing is that Mohun Bagan is the only “I League” playing football club of India who have their own nursery wing. They are taking the proper care of these little kids and on the previous year this nursery team won the Sahara IFA nursery league. The nursery team also qualified for the final round of the Yakult Danone Nations Cup and got 12th position among the top 40 clubs around the world. The famous player from France, Zinedine Zidane also appreciated their style of play. Now the team is preparing for this year’s nursery league and also probably will take part in Gothia Cup and Dana Cup.

Most of us don’t have the proper information regarding the nursery players, so here we are going to provide you the information about these upcoming talents. We have started this segment with the story of the playmaker of this nursery team-the upcoming midfield star Laltu Hembram and now here is the story of the No.1 goalkeeper of the team- Saikat Das.

Saikat Das, son of Mr. Shushanta Das is the backbone of Mohun Bagan nursery team. He comes from an average family of kalyani, a township almost 60 kms from Kolkata.The credit of spotting his talent goes to the games teacher of his school Mr. Rathindranath Majumdar.He then started playing at the Gandhi Hospital Club from where likes of Bijoy Basfore has came. He came to Kolkata to attend the Mohun Bagan nursery team trials and got selected. He is now the 1st goalkeeper of the nursery team. Saikat has proved his selectors right by playing excellently in last year Sahara IFA Nursery League. He also showed his excellence in both the preliminary round and final round of Yakult Danone Nations’ Cup, held at Paris, France. In the final match of the preliminary round, held at Delhi, Saikat saved three shots in the tiebreaker against Sikkim Football Academy. He was adjudged as the best player of the tournament. He idolizes Oliver Kahn. Nursery coach Mr.Amiya Ghosh says, “Saikat has got a bright future and will surely go a long way in his career”. Saikat quoted “I want to represent Team India and Mohun Bagan in future."

We wish him all the very success in his future.

Reported by: Anindya Majumdar

Photograph by: Sandipan Gupta