Bhutia heads Bagan’s winner

Dec 31:  A second-half solitary goal that came through India and Mohun Bagan skipper Baichung Bhutia’s fine header sunk East Bengal in an eighth round match of the ONGC I-League played here on Sunday.

Bhutia netted the 61st minute winner, off a fine cross from Jose Ramirez Barreto with a perfect header, to pick up full three points for Mohun Bagan. The win took Bagan’s points tally to 11 in eight matches and also navigates them into top half of the 10-team inaugural premier club competition.

Mohun Bagan is now at tied fourth place with Mahindra United on points basis but was forced down to the fifth position on goal difference, while its opponent East Bengal is facing big trouble at the moment as it remained in the bottom half with seven points from eight matches.

Both the teams went into the match in pursuit of a victory and looking to gain precious points. The victory was so much mattered to both the sides as first half saw some rough play and officiating referee K. Shankar had to intervene on as many as six occasion with his flashing yellow card— three each from either sides. There were seven bookings in all in the match.

The nastiest and the unsurpassed moment of the match was captured in the 23rd minute of the match when midfielder Mehrajuddin Wadao’s had a bizarre tackle on his teammate Soumik Dey.

Soumik was injured and needed medical attention while referee K. Sankar booked Mehrajuddin for his dubious act of violence. This incident also once again opened up the infighting going on in the Maroon and green brigade.

Bagan was willing to surge ahead as they found with some plan in latter half and saw them in a more assertive mode. They went for a three-man attack bringing in P. Lalawmpuia in place of midfielder S. Venkatesh in the 56th minute.

Lalawmpuia pace and potency down the flanks added more sting to Mohun Bagan’s attack. The moved proved good as the young and agile Lalawmpuia pushed back the East Bengal defence and the goal came soon after.

The East Bengal defence opened up, as they were feeling hard to tackle Lalawmpuia, in the 61st minute when Barreto headed along a Douglas floater for Bhutia to romp home.

East Bengal, which witnessed its fourth consecutive loss, tried hard for the equaliser and went on the offence thereafter creating at least three open chances. But Brazilian Edmilson Marques squandered the opportunities twice and Ashim Biswas once missed the target from close quarters.

TEAMS

Mohun Bagan: Shilton Paul; Habibur Rahman (Lalkamal Bhowmick, 67), Peter Odafe, N.S. Manju, N. Mohanraj; Dharamjit Singh (Subhashish Roy Chowdhury, 83), Douglas da Silva,S. Venkatesh (P.C. Lalawmpuia, 55), James Singh; Jose Ramirez Barreto, Bhaichung Bhutia.

East Bengal: Subrata Paul; Surkumar Singh, Anupam Sarkar, Majek Molaji, Soumik Dey; Jayanta Sen (Chandan Das, 85), Mehtab Hussain, Mehrajuddin Wadao (Dipankar Roy, 71), Syed Rahim Nabi; Ashim Biswas (Snehashish Chakraborty, 75), Edmilson.

Referee: K. Sankar (Tamil Nadu).