Game over?

With no takers for the Super League, clubs - including Mohun Bagan, Asia's oldest - have halted all play. How could this happen to football? Where do we go from here?

- Rudraneil Sengupta

Where were you on July 13, 1997? I was at the Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata, a cauldron of 140,000 people on that hot, muggy evening.

Banners the size of train compartments, bearing the names of different Kolkata neighbourhoods and the club they supported, waved amid the roaring throng.

There was green-and-maroon for Mohun Bagan; red-and-gold for East Bengal (my team). There was the neon green of the pitch and the glare of the setting sun.

Out there, Bhaichung Bhutia, already a legend, was marauding through the Bagan lines like the hero of a kung-fu movie, outpacing, outwitting and out-muscling the defenders that fell on him in desperation. To the delirium of half the stadium and the despair of the other half, the 20-year-old scored a hattrick.