Edeh Chidi

Calcutta: Edeh Chidi, Okwy Diamondstar, Penn Orji, Uga Okpara, Joshimar, Chika Wali, Ranty Martins, Okolie Odafa… the list is long and strong. In the words of AIFF XI’s British coach Desmond Bulpin: “In Indian football, Africans save goals, Africans score goals.”

Like it or not, that’s a fact. That Mohun Bagan registered a 2-0 victory over the AIFF XI in an I-League match, on Saturday, is also a fact. But the greater fact is that both the goals were scored by Chidi.

And an honest evaluation of Sunday afternoon’s match would reveal that if Chidi would have donned the AIFF colours, the result could have been opposite.

Bulpin’s young team possess every quality except the most important one — the goal scoring ability. They ran tirelessly, chased loose balls, played some good passes, had the ball in the rival box and then… Well, nothing happened. Jeje Lalpekhlua and Malswam Fela, AIFF XI strikers, took turns in messing up the chances. Call it inexperience or inability, but that’s also a fact — future of Indian soccer lacks a ‘goal’.

For Bagan, and for coach Subhas Bhowmick, it’s happy times. With their third win on the trot, they are placed fifth in the table having collected 17 points from 11 matches.

Nine of those points owe a lot to Chidi who has now scored six goals in three matches. Chidi made his intentions clear as early as the 8th minute with a thunderous shot (though straight at the ’keeper).

He didn’t have to wait long though as, in the very next minute, he collected an Ishfaq Ahmed cross from the left and unleashed a powerful diagonal shot from the right edge of the box. AIFF XI ’keeper Jagroop Singh tried his best but Bagan went 1-0 up.

The rest of the first half was witness to AIFF XI’s documentary of waste. Every now and then they managed to put the ball in the rival box and then showed how not to score from an advantageous position. The green and maroon brigade, however, plugged some of the holes in their porous defence in the second half.

While Gouranga Biswas made some enterprising runs, Murithala Ali had some agonising misses. And then Chidi added his second in the 82nd minute when he latched on to a Manish Maithani through and lobbed it intelligently past an advancing Jagroop.

In other matches, Air India beat Dempo 4-0 while Salgaocar got past JCT 2-0.

TEAMS

Mohun Bagan: Shilton Paul, Mohan Raj, Kinshuk Debnath, Okwy Diamondstar (Karan Atwal, 71), Nagimuddin Mullick, Ishfaq Ahmed, Souvik Chakraborty (Jayanta Sen, 30), Manish Maithani, Satish Kumar (Gouranga Dutta, 46), Murithala Ali, Edeh Chidi

AIFF XI: Jagroop Singh, Vishal Kumar, Inderpreet Singh, Raju Gaikwad, Abhishek Das, Shilton D’Silva, Jewel Raja (Milan Singh, 48), Subodh Kumar (Shouvik Ghosh, 67), Malswam Fela, Jeje Lalpekhlua (Jagtar Singh, 65)

Referee: CR Shrikrishna

MoM: Edeh Chidi