Mahindra United kick off NFL campaign with win against Dempo

Mumbai, Jan 8 (UNI) Defending champions Mahindra United began their NFL campaign with a bang scoring a hard fought 2-1 win over Dempo Sports Club, Goa at the Cooperage here today.

The Red Devils should have won by a bigger margin, but their forwards failed to give the finishing touches after exposing the Dempo defence.

However, it was Dempo who went into the lead first scoring through Jerry Zirsanga in as early as the fourth minute. Sameer Naik initiated the move down the right flank and then gave a pass to Zirsanga, who was lurking at the top of the box. Zirsanga collected the ball on the volley and shot it low past the diving goalkeeper Sandip Nandy to put his side 1-0 up.

The defending champions stung by this reverse, went into attack mode and in the sixth minute the equaliser, but the cross from the right by Steven Dias was not trapped properly by Venkatesh and the ball went out of play for a goal kick.

Mahindra United drew parity in the 10th minute when a long throw by N S Manju was headed on by Pradeep to Andrews Mensah who made no mistake in putting Mahindra United on level terms.

Mahindra after this dominated the match, but missed gilt edged chances to increase the tally as the scoreboard read 1-1 at half time.

After the change of ends, Mahindra United got the goal they were looking for eight minutes from time when Andrews Mensah with a superb run down the left flank crossed the ball to the waiting Yusif Yakubu who had to just tap the ball in with no one in front of him. Mahindra United got the lead which turned out to be the winning goal.

Dempo's Clifford Mirandi and Bolaji Majeck received yellow cards, while for Mahindra United I Surkumar Singh was booked in the match.

UNI