Vasco: Back to winning ways after a losing streak of four matches, a confident Indian Arrows side will aim to carry the momentum forward when they face defending champions Aizawl FC at the Tilak Maidan here on Friday.
They were trailing 0-1 for most of the game but cupped off a victory with two extra-time goals in a space of two minutes. Both of them were scored by Abhijit Sarkar, who unfortunately will miss the Aizawl encounter after suffering an injury during training.
Joining him is also ningthoinganba meitei who will has also injured himself during the training, ahead off the match.
Happy with the win, coach Luis Norton de Matos praised the fightback of his boys despite going a goal down. “In football, you cannot plan the result. But I’m very happy with the attitude and the victory because it is the first time in this competition that Indian Arrows have won a game which they were losing. Mentally this shows part of the progress and gives confidence to the players,” he said.
The gritty Arrows stand on 14 points from 15 games but are just three points behind Aizawl, who are on sixth with 17 points from a game less.
But the defending champions are winless in their last six fixtures, four of which have ended in draws. Such a result has seen the club part ways with Paul Menezes, with homegrown coach Santosh Kashyap brought in to revive their season.
“If you see my record, I like to take challenges and try to do my best with my experience and whatever I learned through my coaching process. It’s a very unpredictable league and any team can beat any team. We will take it one game at a time,” the Mumbai FC coach said at the pre-match conference.
With the title well out of their sight now, all Aizawl are left to do is fight for a top three finish and Kashyap assured that his boys will fight to the brink for grinding out results.
Despite coming towards to business end of the league, both the sides are yet to face each other and now when they do, they play each other twice in 10 days time.
But on Friday it will be the reigning champions who will start as the favourites felt Matos, but as usual his boys will fight for a result.