Al Shorta top East Bengal’s group, and Habas says the Iraqis are the favourites in Kolkata tonight

East Bengal won the Durand Cup in August and lost the IFA Shield final last Thursday. In Asia they have one point. Tonight they play their first home game in the AFC Champions League Two, against an Al Shorta side their own coach rates above them. “Al Shorta for me are the favourites in this group,” Antonio López Habas said on Monday. Kick-off at the Salt Lake Stadium is 7:15pm IST.

The clubs have never met. Al Shorta top Group D on three points after the first round, and East Bengal and Al Hussein have one each. Lose tonight, and East Bengal would be five points behind the Iraqis with four games left.

The two points left in Amman

It should be better than that already. On 16 September East Bengal were 2-0 up against Al Hussein in Amman at half-time. Dani Ramírez tapped in after the home keeper, Yazeed Abulaila, could only palm away an Edmund Lalrindika shot in the ninth minute, and Anwar Ali bundled in a Ramírez corner off his shoulder five minutes before the break.

Then the Jordanians came back. Captain Mahmoud Al Mardi slid in a cut-back on 61 minutes, and Ahmad Assaf turned in Obaida Al Namarnah’s cross with three minutes left. “We entered with not much confidence in this tournament, which showed in the 2nd half,” Habas said this week. That same night Al Shorta beat Al-Seeb 1-0 in Baghdad, Hussein Ali Al-Saedi scoring early in the second half.

Habas has his squad back

The coach sounded more relaxed about his own players. He said only two are injured and the rest are fit after the international break. His two new foreign strikers are not fully up to speed, though. “Loba and Lukasz have had only nine training sessions so far,” he said of Ake Loba and Lukasz Zwolinski.

He also said he rates his Indian players as highly as his foreign ones, and that the one real difference tonight is the venue. “The only difference is that East Bengal play in Kolkata.” It is the same ground where Mohun Bagan beat East Bengal 1-0 in the IFA Shield final on Thursday, 8 October, Samir Zeljkovic scoring just before half-time.

Habas took the job in July, when Óscar Bruzón left, and he knows Kolkata well, having won the ISL with ATK. East Bengal ended a 22-year wait for the Durand Cup in August by thrashing Mohun Bagan 4-1 in the final, Lalrindika scoring a first-half hat-trick.

Who Al Shorta are

Al Shorta are one of the biggest clubs in Iraq. They have won the Iraq Stars League eight times, including four in a row before finishing second last season. Their league form this season has been patchier: they drew 0-0 with Al Talaba before the trip and sit fourth.

Their coach is Sami Trabelsi, the Tunisian who took over in July. The squad reached India on Friday, giving them a few days to settle before tonight.

The rest of the group

After tonight East Bengal play Al-Seeb away on 27 October and at home on 3 November, then Al Hussein in Kolkata on 24 November. The return against Al Shorta is in Iraq on 8 December, the last group game. A draw tonight would keep East Bengal two points behind Al Shorta with both Al-Seeb games to come, and that would not be a bad place to be. Their ISL title defence does not start until Sunday, against Churchill Brothers at Fatorda, so there is nothing to hold back for.

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