2023 CFL Premier Division

The 2023 CFL Premier Division is the 125th overall season of the Calcutta Football League – highest state-level football divisions of West Bengal. The 2023 edition saw two top tiers merged, with 26 teams participating in the tournament for the first time since its inception.^[1]

CFL Premier Division

Season	2023
Dates	25 June – 30 November
Champions	Mohammedan (14th title)
Relegated	West Bengal Police FC Calcutta FC
Matches played	196
Goals scored	579 (2.95 per match)
Top goalscorer	David Lalhlansanga (21)
Highest scoring	East Bengal 10–1 Kidderpore (26 September) George Telegraph 10-1 FCI (20 November)
Longest unbeaten run	12 matches (East Bengal)
← 2022 2024 →

Format

The 2023 CFL Premier Division merged the top two tiers, Premier A and B, to form an expanded 26-team competition.^[2] Two groups of thirteen teams were divided ,with each team playing every other in the group once. The top three teams proceeded to the Super Six round, where they vied for the championship with the points from group stage being carried over.^[3] Each group's bottom four teams enter the relegation round.^[1][4] As per the rules set by AIFF, this year, no foreign players will be participating in the league. ^[5]

Venues

• Amal Datta Krirangan, Dum Dum
• Aryan Town Club Ground, Durgapur
• Bankimanjali Stadium, Naihati
• Bidhannagar Municipal Sports Complex
• Canning Stadium, Canning
• East Bengal-Aryan Ground, Kolkata
• Eastern Ground, Chinsurah
• Kalyani Stadium, Kalyani
• Kishore Bharati Krirangan, Kolkata
• Mohammedan Sporting Ground, Kolkata
• Mohun Bagan-Calcutta FC Ground, Kolkata
• Netaji Sports Complex, Kamalgazi
• Rabindra Sarobar Stadium, Kolkata
• Rishi Aurobindo Maidan, Konnagar
• Royal Park Stadium, Barrackpore
• Sailen Manna Stadium, Howrah
• Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata
• Vidyasagar Krirangan, Barasat
• Vivekananda Stadium, Khardah

Teams

The 26 teams were divided into two groups based on a draw held on 5 June 2023.^[1][6][7]

Group A			Group B
Team	Head coach	Captain	Team	Head coach	Captain
Army Red	L Antony Ramesh	Suresh Meitei	Aryan	Rajdeep Nandy	Laltu Mondal
Calcutta FC	Jamshid Nassiri	Surojit Das	Bhawanipore	Ranjan Chaudhuri	Jiten Murmu
Dalhousie AC	Mridul Banerjee	Karan Gomes	BSS	Subrata Biswas	Surajit Seal
Diamond Harbour FC	Kibu Vicuna	Abhishek Das	Calcutta Customs	Biswajit Bhattacharya	Amit Chakraborty
FCI (East Zone)	Arun Saha	Dhananjoy Adhikari	East Bengal	Bino George	Subhendu Mandi
Kalighat MS	Patam Bahadur Thapa	Madan Mandi	Eastern Railway	Prasanta Chakraborty	Sumit Orao
Mohammedan Sporting	Mehrajuddin Wadoo	Samad Ali Mallick	George Telegraph	Goutam Ghosh	Sourish Lodh Chowdhury
Mohun Bagan SG	Bastab Roy	Sumit Rathi	Kidderpore	Sayantan Das Roy	Gurmeet Singh
Pathachakra	Rajarshi Ghosh	Ankan Bhattacharjee	Police AC	Supriya Dasgupta	Suraj Bahadur Gurung
Peerless	Hemanta Dora[8]	Amit Tudu	Railway	Kaushik Paul	Monish Majumder
Southern Samity	Ranjan Bhattacharjee	Debayan Hazra	Rainbow	Aditya Chatterjee	Debayan Saha
Tollygunge Agragami	Arindam Deb	Sujoy Mondal	Wari	Micky Fernandes	Swarup Sarkar
United	Steven Herbots	Sanjib Mondal	West Bengal Police FC	Ashok Chakraborty	Subrata Biswas

First stage

Group A

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Mohammedan SC	12	9	2	1	33	9	+24	29	Qualified for the Super Six round
2	Diamond Harbour FC	12	9	2	1	26	5	+21	29
3	Mohun Bagan SG	12	7	3	2	30	13	+17	24
4	Kalighat MS	12	7	3	2	21	8	+13	24
5	Army Red	12	5	6	1	18	11	+7	21
6	Peerless SC	12	5	5	2	22	9	+13	20
7	United SC	12	6	1	5	25	8	+17	19
8	Southern Samity	12	4	3	5	14	17	−3	15
9	Tollygunge Agragami FC	12	2	2	8	9	28	−19	8
10	Pathachakra	12	1	4	7	13	28	−15	7	Relegation round
11	Calcutta FC	12	1	4	7	8	38	−30	7
12	FCI (East Zone)	12	1	3	8	8	32	−24	6
13	Dalhousie AC	12	0	4	8	8	29	−21	4

Updated to match(es) played on 17 September 2023. Source: The Away End
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) head-to-head points; 3) head-to-head goal difference; 4) goal difference; 5) number of goals scored; 6) drawing of lots

Group B

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	East Bengal	12	9	3	0	29	6	+23	30	Qualified for the Super Six round
2	Bhawanipore	12	8	3	1	23	8	+15	27
3	Kidderpore	12	8	1	3	16	11	+5	25
4	Aryan	12	8	0	4	28	12	+16	24
5	Calcutta Customs	12	6	1	5	13	13	0	19
6	ASOS Rainbow	12	5	2	5	11	10	+1	17
7	Wari	12	5	1	6	16	23	−7	16
8	Railway FC	12	3	3	6	12	21	−9	12
9	BSS	12	2	5	5	12	14	−2	11
10	George Telegraph	12	3	2	7	11	19	−8	11	Relegation round
11	Eastern Railway	12	3	2	7	16	26	−10	11
12	Police AC	12	3	1	8	10	22	−12	10
13	West Bengal Police	12	2	2	8	12	24	−12	8

Updated to match(es) played on 7 September 2023. Source: The Away End
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) head-to-head points; 3) head-to-head goal difference; 4) goal difference; 5) number of goals scored; 6) drawing of lots

Super Six

The top three teams from both groups qualified for the Super Six round with the points from group stage being carried over.^[9]

Standings

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Mohammedan (C)	17	14	2	1	44	11	+33	44	Champions
2	East Bengal	17	13	3	1	50	10	+40	42
3	Diamond Harbour (Q)	16	10	3	3	32	12	+20	33	Eligible for 2024–25 I-League 3[a]
4	Bhawanipore	16	8	4	4	26	18	+8	28
5	Mohun Bagan SG	15	8	3	4	33	19	+14	25[b]
6	Kidderpore	15	8	1	6	17	29	−12	25

Updated to match(es) played on 30 November 2023. Source: The Away End
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) goal difference; 3) number of goals scored; 4) head-to-head points; 5) head-to-head goal difference; 6) fair play ranking; 7) drawing of lots
(C) Champions; (Q) Qualified for the phase indicated
Notes:

1. If the top teams are already playing in national leagues, then the next highest ranked team(s) would be eligible for I-League 3.
2. Mohun Bagan Super Giant was deducted 2 points for not fielding a team against East Bengal on 30 November 2023.^[10]

Fixtures

Team 1 \ Team 2	BHA	DHB	EAB	KID	MOH	MBG
Bhawanipore	—	2–2	0–3*	DNP	1–2	0–3*
Diamond Harbour		—	1–4	3–0	0–2	DNP
East Bengal			—	10–1	1–2	3–0*
Kidderpore				—	0–5	DNP
Mohammedan					—	2–0
Mohun Bagan SG						—

Updated to match(es) played on 12 November 2023. Source: The Away End
Legend: Blue = left column team win; Yellow = draw; Red = top row team win.

• * = Walkover

Relegation Round

Points table

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Pathachakra	19	6	5	8	30	36	−6	23
2	George Telegraph	19	6	4	9	32	27	+5	22
3	Police A.C.	19	6	4	9	22	33	−11	22
4	Eastern Railway	19	5	5	9	23	33	−10	20
5	Dalhousie AC	19	3	7	9	17	36	−19	16	Relegated to the First Division
6	FCI	19	3	4	12	16	52	−36	13
7	WB Police	19	3	3	13	18	39	−21	12
8	Calcutta FC	19	1	8	10	16	50	−34	11

Updated to match(es) played on 20 November. Source: The Away End
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) goal difference; 3) number of goals scored; 4) head-to-head points; 5) head-to-head goal difference; 6) fair play ranking; 7) drawing of lots

Fixtures

Team 1 \ Team 2	CFC	DAL	EAR	FCI	GET	PTC	PAC	WBP
Calcutta FC	—	1–2	2–2	0–1	2–2	2–4	1–1	0–0
Dalhousie AC		—	2–3	1–0	1–1	0–0	2–2	1–0
Eastern Railway			—	0–0	0–1	2–0	0–0	0–2
FCI				—	1–10	2–4	1–3	3–2
George Telegraph					—	2–3	0–1	5–0
Pathachakra						—	5–0	1–0
Police A.C.							—	5–2
WB Police								—

Updated to match(es) played on 12 November 2023. Source: The Away End
Legend: Blue = left column team win; Yellow = draw; Red = top row team win.

• * = Walkover

Season statistics

Top scorers

As of 30th December 2023

Rank	Player	Club	Goals
1	David Lalhlansanga	Mohammedan SC	21
2	Rahul Paswan	Diamond Harbour FC	12
	Sahil Harijan	Pathachakra
4	Sagar Kumar Khamaru	Eastern Railway	9
5	Suhail Ahmad Bhat	Mohun Bagan SG	8
	Jiten Murmu	Bhawanipore
7	Muhammed Ashiq Shoukathali	Kidderpore	7
8	Anubrata Maity	Pathachakra	6
	Dipesh Murmu	United
	Mandeep Singh Multani	Wari
	Liton Shil	Army Red
	Aman C. K.	East Bengal FC
	Jesin TK	East Bengal FC
	Achinta Ghosh	Aryan FC
	Vishnu P.V.	East Bengal FC

Hat-tricks

Note: In the result, the score of the player's team is mentioned before.

Player	For	Against	Result	Date
Saikat Sarkar	Aryan	Police AC	4–1	1 July 2023
David Lalhlansanga	Mohammedan SC	Calcutta FC	7–0	12 July 2023
Beneston Piecton Barretto	Mohammedan SC	Calcutta FC	7–0	12 July 2023
Lalrinliana Hnamte	Mohun Bagan SG	Tollygunge Agragami	5–1	12 July 2023
Suhail Ahmad Bhat	Mohun Bagan SG	Dalhousie	5–2	16 July 2023
Dipesh Murmu	United	Calcutta FC	8–0	25 July 2023
Liton Shil	Army Red	Southern Samity	3–2	25 July 2023
Md Amirul	Aryan	Kidderpore SC	4–0	26 July 2023
Jesin TK	East Bengal	George Telegraph SC	4–0	7 September 2023
Vishnu PV	East Bengal	Kidderpore SC	10–1	26 September 2023
Mahitosh Roy	East Bengal	Kidderpore SC	10–1	26 September 2023