Man of the Match Mike Okoro

Calcutta: Man of the Match Mike Okoro showed on Friday why he is the most important man in Mohammedan Sporting. Little bothered by the allegations made by former goalkeeper-captain Naseem Akhtar the other day, the Nigerian led from the front and scored the all-important goal as Mohammedan Sporting used home advantage to beat Mahindra United 1-0 in their fifth round ONGC I-League match at the Salt Lake Stadium.

Latching on to a long ball from substitute Jyoti Kumar in the 73rd minute, Okoro surged past N.P. Pradeep and lobbed over an advancing Subhasish Roy Chowdhury to score. The city outfit thus registered their first win in the national league which took them to five points from an equal number of matches, while their Mumbai-opponents remained on four from as many outings.

Okoro, partnered by Goutam Thakur on a day when Theodore Sunday was out nursing a left-knee injury, single-handedly took the match away from Derek Pereira’s men after they had started with a number of positive moves.

Dominating things in the first-half, the Mumbai men were unfortunate when some challenging moves ended fruitless. Mohammedan Sporting custodian Tungsghang Tharangachan brilliantly thwarted some efforts.

Six minutes after an Adewusi Adebayo shot went out of play (in the 23rd minute), Okoro’s powerful left-footer was thwarted by the Mahindra goalkeeper.

Things fell into place soon after coach Shabbir Ali brought in Jyoti Kumar for Vimal Pariyar in the 62nd minute. Jyoti executed his coach’s instructions perfectly and assisted Okoro up front, resulting ultimately in bagging all three points.

TEAMS

Mohammedan Sporting: Tungsghang Tharangachan, Gurpreet Singh, Madhab Das, Anit Ghosh, Bijoy Das, Sovan Chakraborty (Lalchhuan Awma 90), Adewusi Adebayo, Mir Farooque Hyder, Goutam Thakur, Vimal Pariar (A. Jyoti Kumar 62), Mike Okoro

Mahindra United: Subhasish Roy Chowdhury, N.P. Pradeep (Mohammed Rafi 79), K.N.Ajayan, Sushanth Mathew, Edeh Chidi, Ravanan Dharamraj, Sukhwinder Singh, Justine Stephen, Steven Dias (Sushil Kumar Singh 58), Debabrata Roy (Paresh Shivalkar 72), Douhog Sey D. Pierre

Referee: Dinesh Nair

MoM: Mike Okoro