Lalrindika scored three inside 34 minutes, and East Bengal’s 22-year Durand Cup wait was over by half-time
Five goals at the Salt Lake Stadium, none of them after the 44th minute, and a derby hat-trick of a kind nobody in red and gold had managed since Baichung Bhutia in 1997.
Aug 26, 2026
Sixty thousand people came to the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan on 23 August for a Kolkata derby with a trophy on it, and the whole thing was settled before the interval. Five goals, all of them inside 44 minutes. The second half produced nothing, because there was nothing left to produce.
East Bengal beat Mohun Bagan Super Giant 4-1 to win the 135th Durand Cup. It is their 17th, their first since 2004, and it takes them level with the club they beat at the top of the competition’s honours list.
Two goals in two minutes
Bipin Singh scored in the 10th minute, going through Vishal Kaith to do it. Edmund Lalrindika scored in the 11th. Mohun Bagan had not worked out what shape they were defending against before they were two down in front of 60,129 people.
Lalrindika got his second in the 22nd. Manvir Singh pulled one back in the 33rd and for ten minutes there was a match again. Then Lalrindika scored a third in the 44th and the game went to sleep.
The first since Baichung
Nobody scores hat-tricks in this fixture. Lalrindika is only the second East Bengal player to manage one in a Kolkata derby, and the last was Baichung Bhutia in a Federation Cup semi-final at the Salt Lake Stadium in July 1997, in front of a crowd recorded at 131,781. That match also finished 4-1 to East Bengal, which is either a nice coincidence or the sort of thing supporters will be repeating for years.
Lalrindika took the Golden Ball. Alaaedine Ajaraie of NorthEast United took the Golden Boot with nine.
The Golden Glove went to Kaith, which is what happens when a goalkeeper spends a fortnight dragging his team through shootouts and then has one bad 45 minutes at the end of it. He saved two penalties in the semi-final against NorthEast United in Shillong, three days after taking Mohun Bagan past Jamshedpur in a quarter-final shootout that ran to 18 kicks. Then he conceded four in a final.
Habas picked the right night
Antonio Lopez Habas took the East Bengal job for 2026-27 and the Durand Cup was his first assignment with them. It did not begin well. Mohun Bagan, the club he used to coach, beat East Bengal 1-0 in the opening match of the tournament on 25 July, Sahal Abdul Samad scoring the only goal, and that head-to-head result cost East Bengal top spot in Group A no matter what they did afterwards.
In the final he moved Lalrindika to centre-forward and pushed Jay Gupta onto the left, and Mohun Bagan spent the first half chasing a shape they had not prepared for. Panagiotis Dilmperis left Sahal on the bench and started Anirudh Thapa instead. The man who had beaten East Bengal on the opening night watched the damage from a seat.
Twenty-two years
East Bengal had won 16 Durand Cups by 2004 and then none at all. Mohun Bagan got to 17 first, in the 2023 final, and they did it against East Bengal, and they did it with ten men after Thapa was sent off, Dimi Petratos scoring the only goal in the 71st minute. Three years later the same fixture in the same competition went the other way by three goals.
One night in August does not reorder Indian football. It does end a specific and well-documented misery, and it does so 4-1, in a derby, in front of a full house, with a hat-trick nobody in red and gold had scored since Bhutia. East Bengal supporters have waited long enough to be allowed to enjoy the details.