AGENCIES
NEW DELHI
In a major fillip to Indian football, Kolkata giants East Bengal were ranked 74th in the newly published Asian Football Confederation's (AFC) rankings, becoming the only club to breach the top 100 ranking from the sub-continent.
Previously ranked at 79th, the climb of five positions is primarily due to the Red and Golds' performance in the 2013 AFC Cup, the semi-finals of which they reached and lost to Kuwait SC 7-2 on aggregate. They lost the home leg 2-4 before capsizing to a 3-0 loss in Kuwait.
The latest coefficients ranking system takes into account the performance of teams in the three years following the August 2012 rankings, wherein the now struggling Churchill Brothers, plying their trade in the second tier of the I-League, occupy the 102nd spot and are the next highest ranked Indian team after Biswajit Bhattacharya's club.
The team founded in 1920, recently matched their previous record of winning six Calcutta Football League (CFL) titles in a row and finished the competition unbeaten in the 2015 edition. This was preceded by a fourth place finish in the I-League in the 2014-15 season.
