The fiercest rivalry in all of Indian football ends with ATK Mohun Bagan emerging as the winners after a second half masterclass in a rather heated and exciting game for a brief period.
East Bengal, after a long resurgence for a fair part of the game, seemed to just lose the commitment and completely forgot the heat of the situation they were under in the final few minutes of the game, SC East Bengal had a lot a stake: the important win against arch rivals ATK Mohun Bagan and also an opportunity to pick up a few points to end the season on a virtuous position and and give the fans a reason to enjoy in what has been a reasonably tough season for them.
it wasn’t as if they were sloppy in the final half of the game. SC east Bengal’s defence was very shambolic and sloppy for most part of game, and this was very evident as SC east Bengal were on the edge from the very start and nearly conceded the goal in the opening 6 minutes. the first goal of the game however didn’t take too long after a glorious long ball went ahead of the whole East Bengal defence who were playing very high and got chased by Krishna who kept his composure and beautifully went round the keeper and scored again in the derby.
the goal really seemed to wake East Bengal as they also started creaing chances and were more creative. Over the couse of the next few minutes both teams created chances but East Bengal were the one who ended up scoring after Narayan Das’s sweet long throwing was misjudged by Tiri and he ended up putting the ball behing his own goal and cancelled ATK Mohun Bagan’s lead.
Coming into the second, East Bengal were clearly the team running high on confidence after their late first half equalizer and this was very evident in their play even though the sloppiness commenced, East Bengal as a whole were very ready to give in the blood and sweat to get all 3 points. But we all are very well aware of the fact that this ATK Mohun Bagan attack is such, that if they are offered and the slightest of the chances to score, the take full advantage of it and this is exactly what happened in the 72′ minute when Fox completely lost his concentration and passed it directly to Krishna who was smart enough ton draw defenders towards him and then squared the ball off to Williams who cleanly dispatched it the bottom left corner and gave ATK Mohun Bagan the lead once again.
East Bengal gave in their all in the final stages of the game but couldn’t capitalise. Strugulling for an equalizer,East Bengal started commiting way too many bodies forwardand were punished after a rather smooth and slow counter attack saw Roy Krishna play a beautiful cross towards Javi who scored a cracking header and made sure that the Mariners win the bragging rights and show everybody who is the real king of Bengal.
