Team Herald
MAPUSA: Suraj Hadkonkar came off the bench in the second half to help his side as Dempo Sports Club scripted a 2-0 win over Vasco Sports Club in the Goa Professional League match, organised by Goa Football Association, held at Duler Stadium, on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s win helped the Golden Eagles overlap Sporting Clube de Goa at the top of the table with 24 points from 10 matches, while the Port Towners are at the bottom half of the table with just eight points from nine matches.
Vasco coach Eban Mesquita brought in Beneston Barreto replacing Clive Coelho, following a 2-0 defeat against Sporting Clube de Goa in the last match. Whereas, Dempo who had defeated Corps of Signals by a solitary goal in the last match had also made two changes to their line-up, as their coach Samir Naik brought in Joaquim Abranches and U-20 Nestor Dias in place of Latesh Mandrekar and Desmon Pereira.
Dempo almost opened their tally in the very first minute when Beevan D’Mello neatly headed in from Nickson Castanha’s curling free-kick but the striker failed to beat the offside trap as referee Melroy D’Silva disallowed the same. A few minutes later, they had another chance when Nickson once again came with a similar free-kick but this time Naveen Mendes failed to control his header as the ball flew sky-high.
In the 7th minute, Dempo had the golden opportunity to open the scoring as Joaquim made defence-splitting through pass to Kapil Hoble in the box, but the U-20 winger failed to convert from close with just the keeper at stake. Three minutes later, Dempo winger Yogesh Kadam nicely curled the ball inside the box but this time Kapil saw his header get denied by the woodwork.
As the match progressed, Vasco tried to get back into the match with some swift attacks where first, skipper Schubert Pereira sent in the perfect corner from the right but Guinean winger’s header missed the target narrowly.
On crossing over, Dempo were once again unlucky not the take lead in the 58th minute as Yogesh’s powerful strike rebounded off the crossbar, the ball which later travelled to Beevan whose shot found the side netting. With their front line failing to capitalise on chances, Dempo coach Samir brought on Suraj Hadkonkar to replace Beevan in the 63rd minute and the midfielder made his presence felt within the few seconds after coming on as he brilliantly set up Joaquim with just keeper to beat. The striker later calmly finished the ball at the far post to take his side into the 1-0 lead.
On the counter-attack, Dempo doubled their lead in the 72nd minute when Suraj combined well with Joaquim at the top of the box, who released the ball to the midfielder. Suraj later cut past a defender to enter the box and made no mistake to place the ball home to make it 2-0 for the Golden Eagles.
