Blackburn Rovers request for match against East Bengal in July as part of pre-season tour

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The attention is being drawn to the government especially the authorities involved to act as a matter of urgency, the plight of we the final year scholarship students stranded in Russia. We scholarship students are being held and harassed here in Russia with only a little time to the expiration of their Russian visas. We are stranded by the refusal of the scholarship secretariat through the embassy of unjustifiably halving our shipment allowance, halting of our project allowance and the refusal to pay for hostel and medical arrears which have been stalled since 2009.

By Rahul Bali

30 Jun 2011 09:02:00

BPL, Blackburn Rovers and Aston Villa, Balaji and Venkatesh Rao (Getty Images)

BPL, Blackburn Rovers and Aston Villa, Balaji and Venkatesh Rao (Getty Images)

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Blackburn Rovers are hoping to face East Bengal as part of their pre-season tour this summer.

Steve Kean’s side, who are owned by Indian company Venky’s, have made a formal request to UB Group, which sponsors East Bengal under the banner of Kingfisher, to play a friendly against the Kolkata giants.

Anuradha Desai, Venky’s chairperson, had mentioned that they are keen on bringing their team to the country as part of their pre-season tour.

Amit Sen, director of East Bengal, told Goal.com: “There has been a formal request been made to the UB Group’s sports head, Fraser Castellino. The match is likely to be scheduled somewhere around July 22 as Blackburn are expected to be in Pune for some promotional work for Venky’s.”

However, a number of East Bengal’s first-team stars will be unavailable due to international duty and the club’s foreign players are not expected to be back until mid-August along with their coach Trevor Morgan.

Sen said: “The problem is we do not have our foreign players and have about five players in the national camp which means nine of our first team players are out. We made this known to Mr.Fraser, who is a sensible man and shall then take a call on this.”

He went on to speak about how big an honour it would be for the I-League runners-up to be facing a Premier League side.

“It is certainly an honour for us to be invited but for the moment it doesn’t look feasible. The match has been scheduled way too early for us and it is looking a little dicey,” Sen added.

This is not the first time a European club would want to play in India, with Oliver Kahn featuring for Bayern Munich against Mohun Bagan two seasons ago.

Argentina are also expected to play an international friendly match at the Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata in September against Venezuela.

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Blackburn Rovers request for match against East Bengal in July as part of pre-season tour