Kolkata, Feb 24, 2020: Mohun Bagan club sent an official response to sports editor of bengali daily Bartaman Patrika to refute the article written in the daily regarding Mohun Bagan’s participation in prestigious IFA Shield. The content of the letter is given below.

Today an article has been published in Bengali Daily (Bartaman) in regards of Mohun Bagan Football Team’s participation in the upcoming IFA Shield tournament slated to be held in middle of April 2020. We are disappointed and amused by this imaginary and irrational reporting which has been done in this case. The article mentions that Mohun Bagan would opt not to play the IFA Shield to save salaries of players, which is entirely baseless and absolutely ill propagated.

Please note that all the players have legitimate contracts with the Club till 30th April 2020 and we are committed to pay the salaries as per the contracts entered.

Besides, the article also mentions that if Mohun Bagan accumulates championship points before the last match then the team might not travel with full strength to Kerala to play the last match of Hero I-League 2019-20 against Gokulam Kerala FC because we will be releasing our foreigners to save money. This type of reporting is clearly aimed to distract the focus of our team and create confusion among our players.

We would once again like to mention that players cannot be released just like that and that we are committed to fulfil all contracts and commitments. For better understanding we would like to mention that we paid the entire contract amount to our player Mr. Perez Martinez Salvador (Salva Chamarro) and Mr. Julian Colinas Olaizola who we had to release in December because of injury.

Coming back to the IFA Shield tournament, please note that we have received just a letter of request from the IFA (WB) to confirm our team’s participation. We are yet to confirm or reject the said proposal/request of the IFA (WB). Since this is an invitational tournament, no club is bound to participate. At present we want our focus to be only limited to Hero I-League 2019-20 and the discussion about our participation in IFA Shield shall take place as and when it is necessary.

We are truly surprised to understand why such baseless and imaginary news is being circulated. We request you not to print or propagate imaginary news which will inflict irreparable damage to our team spirit.