Some results are remembered for the scoreline and some for what they do to a season. East Bengal’s 7–0 win over Mohammedan at the Salt Lake Stadium belongs in both categories: it was the biggest margin of the 2025/26 Indian Super League campaign, and it arrived in a season that was eventually decided by the smallest of margins.
Why the margin mattered
East Bengal and Mohun Bagan finished the league phase level on points at the top of the table. When two clubs are that close, goal difference stops being a statistic and becomes part of the strategy. Every comfortable win in the run-in carried extra value, and a seven-goal afternoon against a struggling side was exactly the sort of result that decides a title on a technicality.
The final standings bore that out: East Bengal finished first on goal difference, ahead of their city rivals. Without the margin built in matches like this one, the shield would have gone the other way.
The football behind the scoreline
Heavy defeats in the ISL rarely come from a single tactical failure. Mohammedan’s season had been unforgiving from the start — they ended the campaign without a win — and by the time they met a title-chasing side in good form, the game was a mismatch of confidence as much as of quality.
For East Bengal, the value of the afternoon was less about the opponent and more about the habit of finishing chances when they arrive.
What it set up
Mohammedan’s relegation was confirmed later in the season, and they became the first club to drop out of the ISL. For East Bengal, the win was part of a run that ended with the club’s first ISL title and a place in the continental qualifying rounds.
Read the profile of the champions and their city rivals, and the shape of the 2025/26 season becomes clearer: two clubs separated by fourteen goals across thirteen matches.
