By IANS
Kolkata : Mohun Bagan Monday announced a 30-member squad for the 2007-08 season with Baichung Bhutia as captain and former East Bengal coach Carlos Roberto Silva of Brazil as coach.
Announcing the squad, Mohun Bagan club president Sapan Sadhan Bose said: "I hope that we will be able to fulfil the aspirations of the club members and the supporters. We have stitched together a side that we hope will bring us trophies."
"Even with the poor results last year we have won the Federation Cup and defeated arch-rivals East Bengal three out of four times they met," he said.
While the green-maroons poached five of the Mahindra United stars, they took Pralay Dutta from Chirag United, Jamir Ali Mondal, Sudeesh Mutthaia, Subhashis Roychowdhury and Habibur Rahman Mondal from Mohammedan Sporting, Parminder Singh from JCT Mills, Ishfaq Ahmed from Dempo Sports Club and Tapan Maity from Calcutta Port Trust.
The famous five from Mahindra United are N.S. Manju, Peter Siddiqui, Rauf Khan, James Singh and Shanmugam Venkatesh.
Bose said the club will honour I.M. Vijayan by playing him for some time against Maidan rivals East Bengal before he retires and heads to AFC for his caching licence.
He said that they had purposely left the names of two more foreigners out and will be announced in due course.
The team:
Goalkeepers: Imran Khan, Sangram Mukherjee, Shilton Pal, Pralay Dutta
Defenders: Sanjeev Maria, Deepak Mandal, Bijoy Basfore, N.S. Manju, Peter Siddiqui, Rauf Khan, Subhashis Roychowdhury, Habibur Rahman Mondal, N. Mohan Raj, Rahul Bhattacharjee
Mid Field: S. Dharamjit Singh, Lalkamal Bhowmik, Suman Dutta, Chinmoy Sarkar, Rahul Kumar, Lukram James Singh, S. Venkatesh, Jamir Ali Mondal, Sudesh Muttaiah, Parminder Singh, Tapan Maity
Forwards: Baichung Bhutia (captain), Jose Marcio Barretto, P.C. Lalampuia, Ayan Chowdhury, Ishfaq Ahmed.
Coaching Team: Carlos Silva (coach), Satyajit Chatterjee (asst coach), Hemanta Dora (goalkeeper coach).