Team Herald
sports@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Goa went on a goal scoring rampage in the second half of play and registered a thumping 10-0 victory over Gujarat in the Sub Junior National Football Championship (West Zone) played at Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, on Wednesday.
Stewart D’Mello stole the limelight scoring double hat-trick in the 47’, 65’, 68’, 72’, 75’, and 89’ minutes while Kenneth Da Costa (63’), Rahul Choudhari (78’), Movin Gauncar (85’) and Shanon Viegas (90’) netted one each to do the damage.
Goa enjoyed better ball possession and controlled the tempo of the match from the opening whistle but did not manage to find a breakthrough in the first half of play.
Goa started off the match on a good note and put tremendous pressure on the Gujarat defence. They came close to scoring but Gujarat goalkeeper stood like a rock and pulled off four brilliant saves to deny Goa the opening goal.
In the 30th minute, Stewart unleashed a powerful shot from outside the box which hit the horizontal bar.
Crossing over, Goa began finding their goal scoring groove and getting into killer instinct mode completely shell-shocked Gujarat. The deadlock was broken in the 47th minute when forward Movin Gauncar made an inch perfect cross to Stewart, who made no mistake in front of goal to find the back of the net.
The opening goal motivated the entire Goan squad and they started to make some good inroads deep into the Gujarat goal area.
In the 63rd minute, Stewart made a nice through ball pass to Kenneth Da Costa who fired the ball into the goal to put Goa up 2-0. Hardly had Gujarat recovered from conceding two goals that in the 65th minute Stewart unleashed a rasping volley that crashed into the net. In the next three minutes, Stewart had his hat-trick by beating the goalkeeper completely off a pass from Harsh Patre in the 68th minute of play.
In a repeat scene scenario, another Harsh’s pass found Stewart who made a deft placement for a nice goal to put Goa up 5-0 in the 72nd minute. Gujarat team at this moment seemed completely out of sync and the pressure was clearly visible on the players who let down their guard and started losing focus on the field.
In the 75th minute, Goan medio Aman Bhore made a nice pass upfront to Stewart who let a low drive shot that again found the back of the net. Rahul made it 7-0 for Goa by scoring a fine goal off a pass from Aman.
Goa at this moment were in complete control of the match and it wasn’t long before Movin intercepted a pass and made it 8-0 for Goa in the 85th minute.
Stewart was in his own zone and was hungry for more goals and the hard working striker got his reward with a sixth personal goal to his tally with a very classy finish in the 89th minute to put Goa up 9-0.
Shanon gave the final blow to Gujarat in the dying minutes of the match with a goal in the 90th minute of play to make it a double digit 10-0 victory for Goa over Gujarat.
Goa plays their final match of the West Zone qualifiers against a formidable Maharashtra squad on February 21.
