Sangram Mukherjee

Calcutta: Mohun Bagan on Wednesday named goalkeeper Sangram Mukherjee as the captain for the ensuing season while Deepak Mondal will be his deputy during the period.

The club has also announced Mridul Banerjee as assistant coach for 2009-2010, after Satyajit Chatterjee resigned Tuesday. Banerjee, who was the assistant coach of East Bengal last season, is a FA-certified diploma holder.

“Mridul will be our assistant coach for 2009-10,” club secretary Anjan Mitra announced on Wednesday.

Elaborating on whether Satyajit Chatterjee was sacked or forced to resign, the secretary said that Satyajit’s contract with the club was over and he was not keen to continue.

“Satyajit’s contract was over. But he told us that he cannot continue under somebody who is junior to him,” Mitra said.

“It’s a professional world and we feel age has no value… You cannot expect promotion only because you are senior… You need to have quality for that. Karim has given us five trophies, so we don’t need to judge his quality. As far as Mohun Bagan is concerned nobody is indispensable… Not even me,” he said.

However, when told that Satyajit has expressed his willingness to coach at the Mohun Bagan Academy in Durgapur, Mitra said: “This is definitely a good proposal. But we need to see whether he will be able to stay in Durgapur or not… I don’t see any problem in offering him the job.”

On former Mohun Bagan players — Chuni Goswami, Subrata Bhattacharya and Satyajit Chatterjee — wanting to allow Bhaichung Bhutia to play for arch-rivals East Bengal, the Bagan secretary said: “I will immediately release Bhaichung Bhutia for East Bengal if these players give me whatever they have said in writing.”

Meanwhile, incessant rain forced Bagan coach Karim Bencherifa to postpone their first practice on Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning.

The Moroccan, who was reluctant to comment anything on the Bhaichung issue, said that the focus would be to continue with last season’s momentum and denied having any problems with former assistant coach Chatterjee.