Viva Chennai wasn’t at its best, missing numerous chances, but still went on to win 3-2 against Integral Coach Factory (ICF) and top the table with 18 points in the St. Joseph’s-Chennai Football Association senior division league here on Saturday.
Viva opened the account in the 20th minute after Nigerian Bolanle Kazheem Amobi made use of a long ball by Balwinder Singh to shoulder past Jayakumar and unleash a stinging right-footer.
ICF, which didn’t look threatening enough, equalised within five minutes thanks to an egregious error by second-choice Viva ’keeper Manikandan. Instead of fisting away an aerial pass by Nirmal Kumar, the custodian fumbled while collecting the ball. And Vijay was right in front to pounce on it.
A few minutes after the restart, Viva’s dominant striker Orok Essien Orok struck with a thundering left-footer that beat the ‘keeper V.P. Sathish Kumar all ends up.
Viva started to dominate the proceedings both in terms of ball possession and shots on target in the second session. Orok, this time, sized up a few defenders and set one nicely up for Arun Gilbert, who shot it home.
When it looked like Viva would sail home comfortably, ICF attacked with vigour and intensity. In one such instance, Vijay’s thundering left-footer ricocheted off the right post and Suresh’s shot off that rebound was saved by the ’keeper. ICF reduced the margin after the ’keeper Manikandan failed to clear a half-volley long-range aerial shot by Fredy.
CFA EC meet heldMeanwhile, in CFA’s urgent executive committee meeting held here, a gamut of issues including registration of players, Chennai FC being docked three points, and putting a cap on outstation players, among other things were discussed.
“We were deliberating on having a committee to look into some of those issues,” said a source, who was part of the EC meeting.
It is also reliably learnt that the committee members were convinced that Chennai was rightfully docked the points and there was no way that its player Naveen Kumar couldn’t have been disqualified based on the records given and the admission of the player concerned.
“We went as per the constitution of CFA to decide on Chennai FC issue,” said another source while adding, “it was also quite possible that Chennai FC was misguided [about going to court] instead of exhausting the appeals within CFA.”
The results: Senior div.: Viva Chennai FC 3 (Bolanle Kazheem Amobi 20, Orok Essein Orok 28, Arun Gilbert 60) bt ICF 2 (Vijay 26, Fredy 89).
First div.: SAI 2 (Ramarajan 3, Ganesamoorthy 76) bt SDS 0.
