Did you know the great Lev Yashin played against Mohun Bagan? - Throughout its long & storied history, Mohun Bagan has played against many foreign teams. It can be argued that the greatest was the Soviet Union’s superb side that toured India in 1955.

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Soviet Union’s 1955 trip to India was an attempt at diplomacy through football. It was a precursor to a landmark year in the history of Indo-Russia relationship. In June of the same year, Jawaharlal Nehru visited USSR.

It was a full-strength USSR team coached by Gavriil Kachalin. They were captained by Igor Netto, arguably the greatest ever Russian midfielder and their Forward line contained “Russian Pele” Eduard Streltsov, the joint top scorer in both 1960 European Championship,1962 World Cup.

Their most important player was undoubtedly the 26-year goalkeeper Lev Yashin. A great testament to the quality of that Soviet squad was that 15 members of the same squad would be part of the team that won the gold medal in 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

The Soviets played their first match against AIFF President’s XI. AIFF team was captained by Sailen Manna & contained other star players like Ratan Sen and Amal Dutta. Unfortunately, they were no match for the Russians, losing 7-0 with Boris Tatushin scoring a hattrick.

The Soviets came to Kolkata on the final lap of their marathon tour. Mohun Bagan had an extremely strong team at that time – arguably the best in India with all the star players in the squad like Sailen Manna, Chuni Goswami, P. Venkatesh, Badru Banerjee and many more.

Unfortunately, Mohun Bagan lost the match. Simonyan scored the first two goals and Tatushin scored USSR’s third goal. In the second half, Mohun Bagan tried to press forward but couldn’t get past Yashin as the match finished with a 3-0 loss.