Early years (1889–99) Mohun Bagan was established on 15 August 1889, with
Bhupendra Nath Bose becoming the first president of the newly founded club and Jyotindra Nath Bose the first secretary of it. Mohun Bagan played their first match in 1889 against the team of
Eden Hindu Hostel students and lost 1–0. The initial players to play for the club were Girin Basu, Pramatha Nath Chattopadhyay, Sachin Bandhyopadhyay, Ram Goswami, Sarat Mitra, Hem Nath Sen, Nalin Basu, Upen Ghosh, Manindra Nath Basu, Manomoham Pandey, Probhas Mitra, and the captain Manilal Sen. The first tournament that the club participated in was the 1893
Coochbehar Cup, where the team suffered to perform against the
British Indian Army teams and the clubs like
Aryan, National, Town Club, Kumurtuli, Fort William's Arsenal and the famed Sovabazar, which was founded by the
Father of Indian football Nagendra Prasad Sarbadhikari himself.
Maharaja Rajendra Bhup Bahadur of
Coochbehar, impressed by the team, would become a chief patron of the club. which included
Hiralal Mukherjee, Bhuti Sukul, Rev. Sudhir Chatterjee, Monmohun Mukherjee, Rajen Sengupta, Nil Madhav Bhattacharya, Kanu Roy, Habul Sarkar, Abhilash Ghosh, Bijoydas Bhaduri and captained by
Shibdas Bhaduri. They battled out against the professionally equipped teams of
St. Xavier's College, Calcutta Rangers Club,
Rifle Brigade and
Middlesex Regiment to reach the IFA Shield final without conceding a goal. The enthusiasm for the
final, held on 29 July 1911, was such that people came from other
districts of
Bengal as well as from neighboring provinces of
Bihar and
Assam. The club became the first native team to lift the IFA Shield, that too in front of an estimated crowd of 80,000, although the referee, H.G. Pooler, estimated approximately 20,000 to be the number. Mohun Bagan supporters and the public at large went berserk, even supporters of
Muslim representative clubs like Moslem and
Mohammedan went to the streets to celebrate and the Muslims from
Dharmatala joined the victory procession of
Hindus near the
Thanthania Kalibari. Based on a popular legend, after the match ended, a
Brahmin, pointing to the
Union Jack fluttering atop
Fort William, asked Rev. Chatterjee, "When will that come down?" and was predicted that the flag would come down only when Mohun Bagan wins the shield next time, which coincidentally came true. In 1914, Mohun Bagan for the first time played in
CFL 2nd Division and finished third, but got promoted after a team from the 1st Division withdrew. Meanwhile, Subedar-major Basu had to leave for his commitments in the military service for the
World War I and Dwijendra Nath Basu, nephew of Bhupendra Nath Basu and brother of Subedar-major Basu, replaced him as the club's secretary. Mohun Bagan finished fourth in their league debut, while a separate team of the club made to the semi-finals of the Trades Cup and Coochbehar Cup. On 8 August 1921, the club played its first match against
East Bengal in the Coochbehar Cup semi-final, which ended in a goalless draw, but Mohun Bagn went on to beat them in the replay by 3–0 and gave rise to the
Kolkata Derby. In 1922, Mohun Bagan played exhibition matches of football and
cricket against a team of
Indians from South Africa. The following year, Mohun Bagan was invited to
Rovers Cup in
Bombay, where they lost to
Durham Light Infantry by 4–1. After 35 years of long association of Bhupendra Nath Basu with Mohun Bagan came to an end with his demise in 1924, and was succeeded by Sir Rajendranath Mukherjee. That year Mohun Bagan also failed to win the league and finished second. During this period, the club attended as well as hosted numerous charity-matches all over the country for fundraising as the earnings from memberships were not enough to run the club over a long period.
Significant contributions to the national team (1931–47) Renowned
barrister Shailendra Nath Banerjee became the secretary of the club with the turn of the decade. In 1931, the club acquired the services of highly skilled players like
Karuna 'Habla' Bhattacharya and
Syed Abdus Samad. In 1933, Gostho Pal, who lead the club for 5 years from 1921, got selected as the captain of IFA XI representing
India for an
away match against
Ceylon, but the following year, due to injury, his partner in defence Dr. Sanmatha Dutta led the tour to
South Africa for a series of matches. 1935 saw a great change in Mohun Bagan's tradition of playing with bare-feet when on the behest of
Abdul Hamid, a renowned player from
Quetta, the club decided to use boots mandatorily for the first time. In 1937, Mohun Bagan originally faced off against a foreign team – an English amateur club
Islington Corinthians, who were on a world tour; but narrowly lost by 1–0. In 1938 the tradition of Mohun Bagan players leading IFA teams continued with Karuna Bhattacharya captaining a side to
Australia, where he also scored against
Australia as well as
Football Queensland team during the tour. In the late-1930s both
Umapati Kumar and Gostha Pal retired, but the squad got competent reinforcements – Anil Dey in half back position and Satyen 'Mana' Guin in attack, who a right winger was nicknamed
"Racing Deer" for his speed along the flanks. Mohun Bagan also broke a 29-year-old barren run in Trades Cup, in 1938. In 1941, the secretaryship was given to another famed barrister, B.C. Ghosh replacing Sailen Banerjee, who was elected as the club's vice-president, and the following year
insurance policies were incepted for the medical aid of the injured players during matches, and a medical board composed of reputed doctors was formed to oversee the medical issues. A
trust board was also formed on the initiative of a
solicitor B.K.Ghosh and a barrister Dr. S.K.Gupta for the monetary support of the club.
Post-Independence Mohun Bagan won its second IFA Shield on 15 November by defeating its arch-rival East Bengal in the year of
India's independence, as foretold in 1911, becoming the first club to win the Shield in post-independent India. Ao went on to lead the national team in
1948 Summer Olympics in
London, along with teammates
Mahabir Prasad and
Sailen Manna. The club's secretary, Balai Das Chattopadhyay too had to leave for London as the team's head coach and trainer, while Gostho Pal filled in for his duties in the club. Anil Dey was called for the national team as well but stayed behind, and Dhanadaranjan 'Bokai' Sen carried out the captain's duties in the absence of Ao. In the same year, the
Afghan monarch invited Mohun Bagan on the occasion of their
independence celebrations but the club could not attend because of its preplanned agenda. On the club's
diamond jubilee,
West Bengal's Chief Minister Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy was invited to exhibition matches hosted by the club, that included three friendlies against
Swedish club
Helsingborg. In
1952 Summer Olympics three Mohun Bagan players including Manna as the captain and
Mohammad Abdus Sattar, who joined the club from Mohammedan in 1950, was called for the national team. Mohun Bagan won the CFL in 1951 after a wait of seven years, the IFA Shield in 1952, and its first Durand Cup in 1953 by 4–0 against
National Defence Academy team in the presence of
President Dr. Rajendra Prasad. In 1954 Mohun Bagan became the first club ever to clinch the
double crown of
Calcutta — CFL and IFA Shield, and beat the
Austrian club
Grazer AK by 2–1 and beat the visiting
Afghanistan by 3–0. The same year
Subimal 'Chuni' Goswami joined the senior team from the club's youth ranks. Mohun Bagan also played against
Austria in 1955, but lost by 2–0, and the following year Mohun Bagan, as a representative from India, toured
Indonesia,
Singapore,
Hong Kong and
Malaya, which was organized solely by the assistant secretary of the club Dhiren Dey. Based on their dominative performance, they were invited to a number of matches in
East Africa travelling to
Uganda,
Kenya,
Zanzibar and
Tanganyika. On the recommendations of Chuni and Kempiah, Isaiyah Arumayinayigam had joined the team before the tour, and soon earned the nickname
"Baby Taxi" for his pace. During the tour, out of nineteen matches 15 were won, 3 were drawn and only 1 was lost, while domestically Mohun Bagan won the Shield consecutively in 1961 and 1962. Under Dhiren Dey, a strict regime was reinstated in the club and under the coaching of Arun Sinha, the archaic
2–3–5 formation was replaced by 3-defenders system. Sinha was primarily responsible for properly grooming the likes of Chuni and Jarnail. 1964 saw Mohun Bagan celebrate its
platinum jubilee with a year-long celebration involving numerous sporting events.
Decline and revival under P. K. Banerjee (1965–1970s) In the following years additions like Chandreshwar Prasad in 1965, Pungam Kannan in 1967 and
Sukalyan Ghosh Dastidar in 1969 were made, and Jarnail was made the new captain of the team in 1965. Yet the team lost the consistency soon and, in 1967 and 1968 Mohun Bagan won just two trophies, the Shield and Rovers Cup, respectively. Chuni retired from football in 1968 after spending his whole career at Mohun Bagan; thus, the golden team slowly came to a conclusion. In 1969
Amal Dutta joined and introduced the concept of overlapping
full-backs in
4–2–4 to Indian football, for which Bhabani Roy was the primary candidate. With the new strategy in place, Mohun Bagan played scintillating football and captured CFL and IFA Shield with a 3–1 victory against
East Bengal in the Shield final. With foreign recruits becoming common in East Bengal, Mohun Bagan failed to beat them even once between 1969 and 1974 and lost to their arch-rivals in Durand Cup and IFA Shield finals multiple times. The lowest point of their decline came in
1975 IFA Shield final when Mohun Bagan lost 5–0 to East Bengal, the biggest margin of defeat in the derby till then. The ignominy surrounding the heavy defeat was that several Mohun Bagan players spent the night holed up on a boat in the
Ganges as the supporters laid siege to the club tent. In May 1972, Mohun Bagan toured to newly independent
Bangladesh to play exhibition matches, where they defeated
Dhaka Mohammedan in their first match, but lost to
Shadhin Bangla. Mohun Bagan did recruit a number of young players in 1974 and 1975 so as to steer the team back to success.
Subrata Bhattacharya,
Prasun Banerjee and
Narayanswami Ulaganathan made the team in 1974 and in 1975, Compton Dutta and Dilip Palit joined. By 1976 Mohun Bagan assembled their best team in years under the helm of Chandra Madhab Roy with the inclusion of a host of players from their two local rivals, including the attacking brothers–
Mohammed Habib and Mohammed Akbar, and
Subhash Bhowmick. Prasun's elder brother,
P.K. Banerjee was employed for the managerial post after his immensely successful spell at East Bengal. Under him, 1976 turned into one of the best years in the club's history when Mohun Bagan won their first CFL and IFA Shield titles since 1969 and added Rovers Cup to their success. Most significantly, Mohun Bagan ended a seven-year wait to win the Derby in 1976 with a 17s header from Akbar, assisted by Ulanganathan. Along with
Shyam Thapa, other iconic names like Sudhir Karmakar and
Gautam Sarkar, who was affectionately called
"Indian Beckenbauer", also joined Mohun Bagan in the following year. With a domineering squad, Mohun Bagan yet suffered a shocking defeat of
1–0 against
ITI team in the
inaugural Federation Cup, which became the most prestigious title in the country, and also lost the first Derby of that year. But they successfully became the first club to win the
"Triple Crown" – the IFA Shield, the Durand Cup, and the Rovers Cup, in that year and as per club traditions, they invited East Bengal for dinner.On 24 September 1977, through the efforts of Dhiren Dey, Mohun Bagan played a friendly match against the
American club
New York Cosmos which featured
Brazilian World Cup winners like
Pelé and
Carlos Torres, and
Serie A icon
Giorgio Chinaglia. The game, which took place at
Eden Gardens, had a match attendance of 80,000 along with the Chief Minister of West Bengal
Jyoti Basu. The visitors with an early lead, struggled with the wet climatic conditions, Mohun Bagan raced to a 2–1 lead with the goals from Habib and Manas, but a late goal from Oganesian prevented a famous win for Mohun Bagan, and both the clubs were declared winners.
The National Club of India (1980s) The dominance in Durand Cup and Federation Cup continued in 1980, meanwhile CFL and IFA Shield was called off after a tragic incident that took place during the Derby on 16 August where sixteen people died in a riot among the supporters inside
Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan.In 1981 Mohun Bagan won their first standalone Federation Cup after beating Mohammedan by 2–0 with goals from
Ulaganathan and
Thapa and added IFA Shield and Rovers Cup to the collection as well. Mohun Bagan became the first club to be honored by a postage stamp from the
Government of India on this historical year.
Commercialisation and incoming of foreigners (1990–2000) The centenary celebrations continued till 1990 when Mohun Bagan played against an assembled team that featured
Cameroonian World Cupper
Roger Milla. The club invested significantly to bring back Krishanu Dey and Babu Mani and along with other major signings like
Bikash Panji and especially
I. M. Vijayan, who was being approached by every major club in the country. In 1991 Mohun Bagan made their first-ever foreign recruitment, which was a Nigerian striker
Chima Okorie from East Bengal, and later the second foreign signing was another Nigerian striker Bernard Operanozie, who would play as a defender. With the arrival of
Syed Nayeemuddin on the bench, Mohun Bagan defended their Rovers Cup and won another Federation Cup in 1992. Mohun Bagan also famously won over
Croatian club
Varteks that year in the group stage of
DCM Trophy. 1994 was a decorative year with four trophies including Federation Cup for the third consecutive time, Durand Cup after an eight-year wait, and the CFL. While in
1993–94 Asian Club Championship, Mohun Bagan easily thumped
Club Valencia and
Ratnam in the preliminary stage, but after a 4–0 away loss to
Thai Farmers' Bank in the 1st leg of the second round, Mohun Bagan was ejected out of the tournament for refusing to play the 2nd leg in
Malaysia. India was amid
plague outbreak and Mohun Bagan failed to win any major trophy for the following two years.In December 1996 the
National Football League began as the top-tier league in the country and Mohun Bagan finished at the bottom in the group stage with just one win and was relegated in the next season, which was later revoked by the organizers. The club appointed their former coach, Amal Dutta and under him, Mohun Bagan began to play in an innovative
3–4–3 "Diamond System", which was bolstered by the likes of Abdul Khaliq and Okerie in the front, Mohun Bagan played very offensively, which was rare in Indian football. The glamorous success achieved by Amal Dutta and P.K. Banerjee, who was now coaching East Bengal, had given birth to a significant coaching rivalry between them during the 80s, which reached its peak at the
1997 Federation Cup semi-final. It was one of the most anticipated matches in Indian football history, pitting two fierce rivalries – Mohun Bagan and Amal Dutta against East Bengal and P.K. Banerjee – at one stage. With a record 131,000 attendance at Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, Mohun Bagan's defensive frailties were exposed by
Bhaichung Bhutia, who scored a hattrick in a 4–1 victory for East Bengal. Despite the loss, fans lauded Mohun Bagan's impressive style of play under Dutta's Diamond System. Regardless, the club steered back to win the
1997–98 National Football League with ten matches unbeaten run and only two losses in the league, under the mentorship of
T. K. Chathunni after Dutta left midway due to internal strife with the club officials. Players like Okorie,
Dipendu Biswas, Reazul Mustafa and
Sri Lankan winger Roshan Pereira played pivotal roles in the team. In 1998,
United Spirits, a subsidiary of
Vijay Mallya owned
United Breweries Group, entered into a partnership with Mohun Bagan by buying a 50% stake in the club's football division and formed a
joint-venture entity named
United Mohun Bagan Private Limited. For the first time the club was transformed into a
corporate establishment from a
society status, and the name of the club's football division was thus changed to ''McDowell's Mohun Bagan FC''. That season saw them defeat
Uzbek giant
Pakhtakor Tashkent in the IFA Shield group stage, and eventually win the Shield. Mohun Bagan signed a host of foreigners for the
1999–00 National Football League. Renowned internationals like
Uzbek striker
Igor Shkvyrin,
Nigerian forward Stephen Abarowei,
Thai full-back
Dusit Chalermsan and
Kenyan defender
Samuel "Pamzo" Omollo, and
Brazilian
José Ramirez Barreto joined the club. The Indian contingent in the club was kept almost intact from the last season with the addition of the striker R.C. Prakash and full-back
Dulal Biswas, Mohun Bagan comfortably won the league along with Durand Cup and Rovers Cup with former club player Subrata Bhattacharya at the helm. But at the continental stage, got eliminated with an 8–0 defeat against
Júbilo Iwata in the second round of the
1999–00 Asian Club Championship.
Heightened foreign influence (2000–2010) In the
2001–02 season Mohun Bagan's bid to win back-to-back league titles was shattered when they finished second by just a point behind East Bengal. However, Barreto finished as the league's top scorer. Mohun Bagan also triumphed in the Bordoloi Trophy after thrashing
Thai club
Rajpracha 4–0 in the final. Mohun Bagan's squad was joined by another Nigerian, Abdulatif Seriki replacing Omollo. On the final matchday, in a must-win situation against the title contender –
Churchill Brothers, Mohun Bagan clinched their third league title with a 73rd-minute header by the Nigerian defender Abdul Wastu Saliu assisted by Basudeb Mandal's corner kick. Under Subrata Bhattacharya, Mohun Bagan became the first club to win Federation Cup and NFL in a season.
Bhaichung Bhutia, who had joined the club in 2002 missed out on most of the season to injuries producing a negligible impact on the team. As a result, Mohun Bagan's on-field form slumped remarkably with the club winning just one major trophy in the form of the IFA Shield in these two years. To make matters worse, in 2004 Mohun Bagan's most influential foreigner – Barreto also left the club and Mohun Bagan finished 7th and 9th in
2002–03 and
2003–04 seasons respectively. The barren period of major trophies also continued next season, as they finished 8th in the league and runner-up in Federation Cup. In 2004, Mohun Bagan became the first Indian club to launch a
credit card in association with
ICICI Bank. . With internal problems slowly subsiding, Mohun Bagan assembled a strong side in 2006 that included Barreto and Bhaichung's return, along with a combative Brazilian midfielder
Douglas Silva. The team was further bolstered with top Indian players like
Sangram Mukherjee,
Deepak Mondal as well as youngsters like Lalawmpuia Pachuau,
Lalkamal Bhowmick and
Sushil Kumar Singh. With the sudden resignation of coach Biswajit Bhattacharya, the Brazilian physio of the team, Robson Mattos was hastily promoted as the team's coach. Bhutia and Sangram's collective heroics led them to their 12th Federation Cup. While the
2006–07 league season did not go well with as many as three foreign coaches taking part during the campaign in the form of Robson Mattos and former players – Chima Okorie and Bernard Oparanozie.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter came to Kolkata and attended Mohun Bagan's won 2–1 Derby win on 15 April 2007. On Mohun Bagan Day, the club became the first in India to launch an official mascot which was a tiger named
"Baggu". In 2007 Mohun Bagan sealed their first-ever
Indian Super Cup with a 4–0 victory over the league champions
Dempo, with Bhutia scoring a hattrick. In
2007–08 season, where NFL got rebranded as
I-League, Brazilian coach
Carlos Roberto Pereira took the reins of the team but failed to win any significant accolade. The following season, Mohun Bagan appointed
Moroccan coach
Karim Bencherifa, who led the team to a record 10-match winning run in the league and a Federation Cup victory. Still, poor performance in his second league resulted in him being sacked midway through the
2009–10 season and putting Satyajit Chatterjee as the interim coach. The only highlight of his second campaign was the 5–3 Derby victory on 25 October 2009. In 2008, Mohun Bagan players got the opportunity to play against
German icon
Oliver Kahn in his official
testimonial match for
Bayern Munich, which also featured Brazilian star
Zé Roberto. The match was played on 27 May 2008 at Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan and finished with Bayern Munich comfortably winning by 3–0. The same year
Argentine World Cup winner
Diego Maradona paid a visit to the club tent during a tour to India.
Struggles in the new decade followed by significant success (2010–2020) Mohun Bagan emerged as third ranked Indian team and 611th position worldwide, in the international rankings of clubs during the first ten years of the 21st century (2001–2010) issued by the
International Federation of Football History & Statistics in 2011. The club though struggled for supremacy in the first five years of the new decade, and the seasons were marked by poor team recruitment, which lacked balance and overpaying for players. The management focused only on recruiting big names while ignoring essential areas of the team which needed bolstering. Some of the foreign stars recruited during this period were
Odafa Onyeka Okolie from Churchill Brothers, with a record salary of 1.4 crores per year in 2011,
Muritala Ali from
Mahindra United and
Tolgay Özbey from East Bengal. These players failed to replicate their form shown at their former clubs and as a result Mohun Bagan teams which were often built around them also suffered. After an illustrious career at Mohun Bagan, Barreto finally made his exit in 2012. A crowd of over 50,000 turned up at Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan on 6 May 2012 as Barreto played his last match for the club against
Pune, where he scored his final goal for the team. The Brazilian ended his career at the club as the first foreigner to score over 200 goals in India for a club with his final tally reading 228 goals in 371 matches. The club endured a phase of five years without a major trophy between 2010 and 2015, the longest such phase since the nation's independence. Although Mohun Bagan won the 2012
Airlines Cup, it wasn't a major trophy anymore. On 29 December 2012, Mohun Bagan was barred from competing in I-League for two years following a decision taken by the league's core committee. The suspension came because Mohun Bagan had refused to take the field in the second half of the match against
East Bengal on 9 December 2012 due to crowd violence and an unsuitable atmosphere for the continuation of the match. All their results in the
2012-13 season were declared null and void and all their remaining fixtures were cancelled. However, on 15 January 2013, Mohun Bagan appealed against the decision and were reinstated, but a hefty amount was fined, their officials were suspended from all the AIFF meetings for a year and, the team would start with 0 points and would play out only the remaining 16 fixtures in the league. This did not affect their win-loss and goal difference record in the table. This led the team in a dire relegation fight but were successful to avoided it. In the following season, the team performed disastrously and finished 8th in the table, scarcely avoiding relegation. A constant incoming and outgoing of coaches saw established names like Subrata Bhattacharya,
Subhash Bhowmick and Karim Bencherifa, along with younger coaches like
Stanley Rozario and
Santosh Kashyap failing to end the precarious state of the team. Mohun Bagan started the 2014–15 season with Subhash Bhowmick on the bench. However, after finishing as runners in CFL and Bhowmick's lack of mandatory AFC Pro license saw
Sanjoy Sen taking over the reins before Federation Cup. Mohun Bagan's Cup campaign did not go well as they crashed out of the tournament after a 4–1 loss against
Salgaocar. With the likes of
Katsumi Yusa,
Sony Nordé and
Balwant Singh often making the headlines, Mohun Bagan made into the final league match away against the title contender
Bengaluru with just a point advantage, that ended in a draw, thereby winning their first major trophy in five seasons and the first league title in eleven years. Mohun Bagan had reached their
quasquicentennial year of existence in 2014, therefore club organized a huge rally in North Kolkata chiefly to celebrate the anniversary on 1 June 2015. The celebration was capped off with their league victory achieved the previous month. The victory parade saw around 200,000 supporters, by some estimates, lined up along the streets, with prominent former club associates like P.K. Banerjee, Manas Bhattacharya, Bidesh Bose, Compton Dutta, Shibaji Banerjee, and Satyajit Chatterjee involved with the celebrations. FIFA president Sepp Blatter also congratulated Mohun Bagan in a special letter. At the continental stage, Mohun Bagan became the first Indian club to win a match in
AFC Champions League and qualify for the second preliminary round of
ACL qualifying play-offs, when they defeated
Singaporen club
Tampines Rovers by 3–1. Mohun Bagan also recorded the biggest margin of victory by an Indian club in an
AFC Cup away match when they defeated
Hong Kong club
South China by 4–0. In that edition, the team also reached the round of 16 but got eliminated by Tampines Rovers. After a breakaway from United Breweries in 2015, Mohun Bagan was once again re-established as a society. Still, in 2017
Mohun Bagan Football Club (India) Private Limited was registered as a legal entity on 31 July 2017. The new legal entity created was exclusively for all football activities of Mohun Bagan. On 28 September 2018 in the
Clash of Legends (a match between the teams of retired former players of the respective clubs), Mohun Bagan
Legends hosted Barcelona
Legends at Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan, that was attended by a crowd of 45,000, along with one of the directors of Barcelona Pau Vilanova and the
mayor of Kolkata
Sovan Chatterjee. The fixture concluded with a heavy defeat for the hosts by a score-line of 6–0. The following three seasons since the title win, Mohun Bagan continued their strong contest for trophies, but succeeding to win only the
2016 Federation Cup, though foreigners like Yusa and Norde continued to make their presence felt with strong performances, along with single season signings like
Darryl Duffy and
Cornell Glen. Among the Indians,
Jeje Lalpekhlua,
Pritam Kotal, and
Prabir Das produced some of their best performances for the team. In 2018, the team managed to reach the semi-final of the
inaugural Super Cup that replaced Federation Cup as the country's top knock-out tournament. The following
season was considerably poor under the new coach
Khalid Jamil, as the team finished 5th on the table. The club also pulled out of Super Cup along with the other participating I-League clubs in protest against the unfair schedule favoring the
Indian Super League clubs. Therefore, the season concluded with no national trophies in three consecutive seasons. The management appointed
Kibu Vicuña for the next season, and he gave the leadership duties to
Dhanachandra Singh and
Gurjinder Kumar. He promoted several players like
Subha Ghosh,
Sk. Sahil and
Kiyan Nassiri from the youth ranks to the first team and assembled a squad with a blend of youth and experience. Vicuña brought a brand of football to India, which was very similar to that commonly seen in
Spain. He believed in playing a possession-based game and incorporated build-up from the back, for which he used
Baba Diawara at the front and supported by
Joseba Beitia with
Nongdamba Naorem and
V.P. Suhair running down the flanks. The midfield was dictated by
Fran González while the defense was held by the strong pair of
Daneil Cyrus and
Fran Morante. With record 14 matches unbeaten run, Mohun Bagan sealed their second I-League title and fifth national league title on their 16th matchday with a 1–0 win over
Aizawl at the
Kalyani Stadium. With four matches still to be played,
2019–20 season was terminated by the AIFF due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Entering the ISL and achieving success (2020–present) {{football squad on pitch|align=right Mohun Bagan performed well in their first two ISL seasons under
Antonio Lopez Habas, but it was in the
2022–23 season when they won their 1st
ISL Cup title under
Juan Ferrando by defeating
Bengaluru FC 4–3 on penalties. After the win,
Mr. Sanjeev Goenka himself announced the removal of ATK and the change of name to Mohun Bagan Super Giant. Mohun Bagan started the 2023–24 season by winning the
2023 Durand Cup after defeating arch rivals
East Bengal 1–0 in the Final and this was their record 17th
Durand Cup win. They started the
2023–24 Indian Super League very well but their form declined and Antonio Habas replaced Ferrando as the head coach. After this, they turned things around with strong performances from the players and won their 1st
ISL League Shield by defeating Mumbai City 2–1 on the last match day of the 2023–24 season. This was the 6th Indian League title for Mohun Bagan. In the
2024–25 Indian Super League Mohun Bagan became the first team to successfully defend their League title as they won their 2nd consecutive League Shield and 7th Indian League title with a 1–0 win against
Odisha FC with two matches left. Mohun Bagan ended their league stage campaign with a win over
FC Goa with 2–0, shattering numerous ISL and Indian football team records, notably being the first Indian club to reach 1000 points in cummulative Indian top division leagues competitions. As of March 2025, Mohun Bagan have never lost a
Kolkata derby to arch rivals East Bengal in the ISL and have dominated the fixture significantly. They defeated Bengaluru FC in the
final to win their second ISL Cup. == Club crest and kits ==