Wednesday Morning Banter: Bengaluru FC vs East Bengal closed door friendly hilariously leaks to fans

THIS MORNING, A CLOSED DOOR friendly match took place between Bengaluru FC and East Bengal.

Being a pre-season friendly match, it was never meant to mean much in terms of the result reflecting the quality or the performance of either team. But due to the circumstances there was a lot of hype around this match. Perhaps for no good reason, but that's fandom for you.

Firstly, it was the first time Bengaluru FC were facing an I-League club after leaving the top division league in favour of the cash rich ISL. And this game also marked the return of Khalid Jamil to Kanteerava, the former Mumbai FC and Aizawl FC coach who has his own history with the Bengaluru FC team and its fans.
 

Being a practice match behind closed doors, not much details were made public. But that didn't stop die hard fans of the game from snooping around and leaking information. Given that none of the clubs were officially talking about the match or even giving out the basic details about it, things became confusing very fast and by the time the match was over, the whole thing had gotten out of control.

The match started around 9 am this morning and some East Bengal fans were wandering around the Kanteerava Stadium hoping to catch a glimpse of it. One of them was Joydeen Sengupta. And it was him who kicked off the day's banter parade.

First he managed to live stream much of the game through a crack in one of the gates; seemingly the VIP entrance.
 

He then climbed up one of the floodlight stands and started posting pictures and providing updates about the game.

Information started trickling out through East Bengal fan groups too. And all of the Red and Gold faithfuls began cheering when they heard that their club had gone 1-0 ahead against BFC, with Charles scoring the goal. The TFG Football Twitter account also relayed that same information.

Pre-season friendly (closed door) update: @bengalurufc are trailing 0-1 to @eastbengalfc, 70 mins in. #HeroISL #HeroILeague #indianfootball

— TFG Football (@TFGfootball) October 25, 2017

Both Albert Roca and Khalid Jamil were expected to play multiple players and try out different tactics and formations and that's what they did. In fact, when the match went into the break, both sides fielded completely new sides for the second period. This time, from the sketchy details about the game that were leaking out, it seems that Bengaluru FC played an all-out attacking game in order to get back into the game. East Bengal were under pressure but they endured the attacks. The whistle ran out and the game stopped... East Bengal had beaten Bengaluru FC!

The East Bengal fans who had braved the walls and gates and floodlight stands of the Fortress proudly declared to the world that the Red and Golds had prevailed once again over the Blues. And so did we.

And then this happened.

Yes... apparently the game was to be played in three periods of 30 minutes each. But the proponents of first hand information had kept a lid on that. Hence, the providers of second hand information ran with what they saw, minus that bit of context, causing the first hand information purists to complain that people had gone ahead and talked about the friendly match instead of waiting for them to... erm... continue not talking about it.

The Bengaluru FC twitter handle had not tweeted all morning. They only stepped in and acknowledged that a friendly match was going on when they saw that despite their efforts to make it a closed door affair people were getting updates on what was happening anyway, and making a mess of it in the process.

Meanwhile, even the East Bengal twitter handle seemed to be getting second hand information, just like us commoners. Because after the second period ended even they declared victory... a tweet that they had to delete minutes later.

East Bengal and TFG have so much in common.

So the match re-started. This time Khalid Jamil put in all the foreign players in the squad. And Bengaluru FC resumed their attacking gameplay to get that all important equalizer.

And equalize they did. After going down on the 10th minute, their long wait for a goal was ended by a striker with an equally long name. BFC's Venezuelan recruit Nicolas 'Miku' Ladislao Fedor Flores scored for the home team, leading to the match ending in a 1-1 draw.

Khalid Jamil added another thrilling away draw to his belt.

Of course, the match was over, but the banter wasn't. Bengaluru FC wasted no time in reminding East Bengal of their initial error.

The game we’re watching just ended 1-1. #BFCvKEB 😟 pic.twitter.com/Pq687npenZ

— Bengaluru FC (@bengalurufc) October 25, 2017

But of course, in the footballing sense, this was great practice for both teams. Benaluru FC got to see a new recruit score in Miku, as did East Bengal with Char... wait, what?

Correction with the goalscorer. It was Surabuddin Mallick who opened the scoring for the Red and Yellow, not Charles.

— KF East Bengal (@eastbengalfc) October 25, 2017

Has somebody opened up an inter-dimensional portal? Are we living in a world of alternative facts? Is Donald Trump right about fake news? Did Tirumala Bar open early?

What is reality, anyway?

Of course, the fans that had been meticulously following this whole thing were keeping track of everything including deleted tweets. Including Bengaluru FC fans, who had come out of hiding after their team got the equalizer. Soon, an avalanche of banter was set in motion.

When you drink old stock of Kingfisher Beer early in the morning. pic.twitter.com/LJaSkxadJi

— Waseem Ahmed (@Waseem_Ahmed11) October 25, 2017

And they want ISL😂😂😂 @fni @visheprasad

— Sagar Sajeev (@sagarsajeev7) October 25, 2017

Hey @eastbengalfc are you @realDonaldTrump in disguise? My bad. Can't be. You owed up to a mistake.

— Souvik Roy Chowdhury (@souvikrc) October 25, 2017

This is what happens when you try to make something a "closed door" affair and your door, well, doesn't fully shut.

So what's the lesson from this - interesting - morning? For the club it perhaps is that you need to prepare better for private games since the attention Indian football is getting has increased tenfolds over the last decade and coupled with easily available technology it's harder than ever to maintain secrets.

For us... maybe we should not rely on second hand information too much in situations like this.

For the fans... well when was the last time football fans took lessons in behaviour? The Kanteerava Stadium security staff better watch out or they'll have a dozen East Bengal fans camping overnight on their floodlight stands just to watch the second closed door game between BFC and EB on Friday.

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