BANGALORE, JAN 2
Salgaocar Sports Club start favourites against hosts Hindustan Aeronautics Sports Club (HASC) in the seventh round of the I-League football championship match at Sri Kanteerava Stadium here tomorrow.
Occupying the second place in the points table, the Green Brigade team has a strong line up with midfielder from Japan Ryuji Sueoka having already proved his worth by scoring five goals so far. He is well backed by two other foreign players Yakubu and Ekene, who have scored three goals and one goal, respectively.
Forward Anthony Barbosa and Gilberto Olivier who scored a brace of goals each have made the team strong.
The Airmen, who gained reentry into the league because of their strikes in Super League championship, took off with flying colours winning the first two encounters. But they failed to maintain the tempo having drawn with Viva Kerala (1-1) and losing the remaining three matches against Air India (0-1), MFC (1-3) and AIFF XI (1-2).
While Forward J Murali scored a brace, the mercurial Xavier Vijyoykumar, R C Prakash and Bijesh Kumar scored one goal each in the six matches played so far.
Salgaocar coach Karim Bencherifa expressed his reservation over the condition of the ground saying that ”the ground is uneven and the players would find it tough to cope with it. I wish it could have been better.”
But he is confident of his team putting up a brave fight in the morrow’s match and increasing its points.
HAL coach Thygaraj expressed confidence of his team bouncing back and coming back to winning track and increasing the points tally.
Salgaocar has so far earned 12 points to occupy second place with East Bengal having won all the six matches leads the table with 18 points. Salgaocar has won four matches and lost two.
HAL on the other hand has seven points to its credit from six matches having won two, draw one and losing three.
