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Journalism of Courage
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. This line quite easily sums up the week that was in the league. With most of the teams heavily relying on their ‘priced’ talent for goals, East Bengal yet again stole a march — their fourth in as many outings — to remain perched at the top. East Bengal’s win, no hanky-panky this, was against Mohun Bagan, who otherwise have had a dreadful run, including a last-gasp, injury-time goal by Bhaichung Bhutia against Mahindra United in Mumbai.
Eight matches and just 11 goals — seven from non-desi players wraps up the over-dependence on these players. Such was the foreign influence that Vasco, who ran up their third win in-a-row and Hindustan Aeronautics SC, who logged their first victory, profited the most. Marcos Perreira’s dual-strike helped Vasco dump Indian Bank 2-1 in their ‘home’ match that also saw Kasun Jeyasuriya’s (IB) equaliser earning the credit for being the 50th goal of the league. Perreira thus joined the ‘Elite Brace of Goals’ club alongside Imran Mohammed and Sayed Sabir Pasha (both Indian Bank) and Harvinder Singh (JCT). Vasco then had Perreira’s Brazillian counterpart Rui Wanderlei Weiz lay Salgaocar low to leapfrog into the contender segment of the NFL. Salgaocar’s loss meant that in Goa they have had mixed luck after winning 2-0 against Indian Telephone Industries (ITI).
HASC moved up handing JCT their third defeat of the championship. Uzbek striker Raja Baliev Nurlan, incidentally, completed ITI’s job. JCT, with five matches and just a couple of points, have still to figure out what in the world went wrong as so far they have been entertainers in away matches.
High-profile Mahindra United were not impressive and played out a goalless draw with Dempo, the first in Goa to have ended without the scoreboard moving. The draw again was one of the two ‘no-goal’ shows of the week with ITI-JCT ending in a stalemate. The team to have an extended vacation off the field was Tollygunge Agragami, who kept away from match day for the second week (they last played on November 21)!
A fair idea of the foreign flavour can be brought to light that barring the two goalless matches, five matches have had at least one foreigner find himself on the scorers’ list. East Bengal quite in contrast had both their goals scored through Indians — Subashish Roy Chaudhary and Alvito D’Cunha.
