The entrance to the Wari Athletic Club (WAC) in central Calcutta’s Maidan area is easy to miss. According to Chakraborty, “Sometime in the 1950s, footballer Pankaj Gupta spoke to the Indian Football Association and secured permission to host third division football here.” Divisions in football refer to categories. It is not as if the WAC is the only century-old football club of Bengal. The Calcutta Football Club was set up in 1872, though in the initial days it was a rugby club. He says, “It had once defeated a very famous football club from Brazil, the Corinthians.”Chattopadhyay talks about Tejesh Kumar Shome, better known as Bagha Shome within Bengal’s football fraternity, who was part of this club.

Source: The Telegraph June 22, 2019 19:52 UTC