Viva gets past HAL

Apart from having quality players, the essence a team’s success is its bench strength – this is a proven fact and if only the Aircraftmen team management acted on it. 

 

If a player from the starting XI sits out (for whatever reason) at any given day, the team struggles - this had happened earlier and happened today when HAL lost by a goal to Viva Kerala.

Right-back, Sreekanth, who has been the find of the season missed today’s outing due to double-booking and his replacement Karthik was just not an able replacement. Deep-defender Femi too was off-color today, with the Viva attack beating him regularly. Later, confirmed by manager that he was not in the best of health. Such apathy that the team fails to find a replacement and persists on the unfit player!

Viva thoroughly dominated the first half barring last 5 minutes. HAL defense could not stop the flurry of attacks. They should consider themselves lucky for not conceding any more goals - at least for 4 occasions the ball was hit way off the target.

The goal came in as early as in the 18th minute via a diagonal long-ranger shot taken by N P Pradeep from the top-left edge of the box.

 

After conceding the goal, HAL immediately replaced winger Ankit with R C Prakash. A move that baffled everyone as the youngster was playing up to the mark. However, this was explained later by HAL manager Muralidharan – the combination of R C and Hamza with Xavier works well for the team and has yielded goals. This was definitely a gamble, which didn’t work out today!

 

Xavier orchestrated some excellent moves from the flank, however, strikers could not match to his brilliance to fetch an equalizer for HAL.