Coimbatore: A rampant East Bengal extended their winning streak to three matches shoving aside Chennai City 2-1 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Friday.
It was an exciting first-half that saw all three goals being scored within the first 45 minutes. Japanese Katsumi Yusa gave Red and Golds the lead in the 27th minute, while Charles de Souza made it 2-0 five minutes later. Alexander Romario Jesuraj pulled one back for the home team just two minutes before half-time, but couldn’t find another as East Bengal won their first away game this season.
On an winning spree of two games, Kolkata giants East Bengal made great use of their dominating start, making it 2-0 in just over half an hour. Chennai goalkeeper Uros Poljanec was to blame for both the goals as the Slovenian custodian failed to clear the ball instead making a mockery of himself.
An Al-amnah cross from the right was straight at the Poljanec, who instead of holding attempted to clear the ball, but could only do so as far as Yusa, who made no mistake to score from a simple tap-in.
It was another howler from the former Pohorje custodian that led to the second goal, with Poljanec gifting the ball to Charles from a clearance, for the Brazilian to perform another tap-in five minutes after the first goal.
Chennai did force a comeback minutes later when Alexander Romario scored from a long throw in the 43rd minute.
The second-half however completely different from the first as chances soon dried up for the hosts who failed to create any clear-cut chances with East Bengal happy to roam the ball around.
Jamil did make a few defensive substitutions to prevent any hiccups as the Red and Gold saw out the final few nervy minutes to register their third consecutive victoy and a first away win this campaign.
The Kolkata side also moved up to the second position with 10 points from five matches, while Chennai continued their struggle with four points at the seventh position in a 10 men table.