A formal agreement for a long-term partnership with East Bengal Club has been inked today by the Emami Group. The deal leads to the creation of the “Emami East Bengal” enterprise but the team will compete in the Indian Super League as East Bengal. Notably, East Bengal Club and Emami enjoyed a fruitful partnership in the 1990s when they were associated as sponsors. But today, thirty years later, Emami and East Bengal have signed documents confirming the company as their investors going forward.
Several well-known former East Bengal players, including Prashanta Banerjee, Mehtab Hossein, and Syed Rahim Nabi, presided over the agreement signing ceremony.
Aditya Aggarwal, Emami’s non-executive director, addressed to the fans’ worry about the delayed team-building by saying, “The ISL will begin soon, so we are a little back in terms of the preparation, but the way we are working together for the last 2-3 months, we will cover the lost ground very soon. We will take some time to form a solid team for sure.” As reported by IFTWC, while Mr. Aggarwal was speaking, East Bengal was already in advanced negotiations with VP Suhair and Aniket Jadhav as well as a number of other players. For the past two years, East Bengal has suffered as a result of delayed team construction, but based on Aggarwal’s comments, supporters shouldn’t be alarmed.
Manish Goenka, meanwhile, resonated with Aggarwal, “The team that we’ll build will give their best. The results are not in our hands but hopefully, we will be able to do much much better than the last 2 seasons.”
Goenka provided assurances on the Emami East Bengal team’s success “Two giants of Kolkata are joining hands. I am pretty sure that we’ll have huge success.”
Ajay Krishna and Debabrata Sarkar, two prominent figures from East Bengal, where among those who attended the ceremony. Mr. Krishna proceeded: “I believe that our relationship with Emami will take us to new heights. They’ll bring glory to us and the fans. If there’s belief and faith then we can go down a long road. We believe that we’ll see more golden years with Emami.”
Later, the media was apprised of the agreement’s details. It was revealed that East Bengal Club will only own 23% of the shares of Emami East Bengal, with the remaining shares owned by Emami (77 percent ). The board would also include three members from East Bengal and seven members from Emami. The agreement was defined by Aditya Aggarwal in quite plain terms “The arrangement resembles a marriage. It has no set end time.”
Although a handful of players are already in Kolkata and ready to train, Stephen Constantine is scheduled to be there later this week. For the CFL and Durand Cup campaigns, Bino George is slated to manage the East Bengal team while Stephen will concentrate more on the league.
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