PANJIM: Dheeraj Singh was exceptional on a night which saw the visitors constantly knocking at FC Goa goal. But for Dheeraj, he wasn’t ready to let in any. Be it a long range shot, a top corner free kick or a near post header, the FC Goa custodian threw his body on the line to ensure Gaurs maintain their perfect start not conceding a single goal in the campaign. That’s two clean sheets in two games.
“Dheeraj was superman today,” FC Goa coach Juan Ferrando praised and lauded the custodian’s performance against Al Wahda FSCC which inspired the Gaurs to their second draw of the campaign.
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His maturity and and decision making was second to none and it was undeniably the custodian’s efforts in the goal which earned Goa their second draw of the campaign.
However, Ferrando believes the keeper needs to improve on his feet. “Our goalkeeper had a good second half, but need to improve on his feet,”. Ferrando’s comments come in following the custodian’s poor passing stats in the game. Dheeraj had just 12 accurate passes out of 26 with a mere 46 percent stat.
Al Wahda FSCC coach Henk Ten Cate started his press conference making a mention of the FC Goa custodian and said, “You can say, they had a fantastic goalkeeper or we missed too many chances.”
Henk was right about the first part of the statement as Dheeraj made six crucial saves including four from inside the box to keep his second clean sheet of the campaign. His best save coming in the stoppage time when he blocked Omar Khrbin’s header from inside the box at the near post.
However, the coach wasn’t wrong about the second part. Al Wahda had themselves to be blamed for wasted opportunities. “We had too many easy chances which we didn’t score. Unfortunately it’s just a draw. We should have scored. These are the chances you cannot miss. If we had scored just 50 percent of our chances, that would have been good. We should have scored at least a goal,” he concluded.
