EAST BENGAL vs DEMPO POST MATCH ANALYSIS
(Woe)man of the match should go to the officials, especially Vishnu Chauhan for depriving East Bengal of a clear penalty in the dying minutes of the first half, yellow carded Tolgay instead for play acting. In the second leg MB game, he was meting out funny decisions and today once again. Such pathetic refereeing in a virtual final and most importantly posting a referee who in no way is among the top three in the country, comes from a non existent football culture state like Gujarat is lack of judgement in posting officials. The result, East Bengal deprived of a chance and Dempo lifts the trophy.
EAST BENGAL
POSITIVES
- Gurwinder Singh, had a stellar game. Odafa considers him the best Indian defender and today he justified that. On current form and if fully fit, he is yards ahead of Gourmangi or Anwar or even Kinshuk, only the divine knows why is never considered for national duty. In my personal opinion, man of the match for today.
- Sandip Nandy, his outing today would be a lesson to any budding custodian
NEGATIVES
- Morgan’s lack of flexibility in strategy, his obstinacy at not using the flanks, especially the left flank giving the biggest chink in Dempo armor Sameer Naik lots of time and space to move up in attack. In the MB, Subrata’s strategy of having Snehasish run him down the flanks had Naik in sixes and sevens. Morgan is too much of a british stiff upper lip to learn from an Indian coach. For a full one hour, played the long ball strategy down the middle without much effect. Around the hour mark, brought in Sanju for his pacy runs down the middle (once again) and Naoba to utilize the right flank. Naoba didn’t look fully match fit and by now, a coach of Armando or Subrata’s (no wonder EB lost all the Calcutta derbies but one) level would have read Morgan’s very familiar attack down the middle strategy and have prepared themselves well enough to counter that. Last year, Morgan with his faux pas in strategizing (which Karim took full advantage) virtually gifted the I league to Salgaocar in the away game. Even this year, with players of reasonably solid technique, performance of East Bengal was below par. It’s high time EB officials do a exhaustive analysis of Morgan’s coaching performance before the start of next season.
- Edmilson hitting the woodwork from close, a chance he created himself exploiting Creson Antao’s carelessness
- Tolgay can be made ineffective if you have a couple defenders hovering around him not giving him any space for his runs with the ball, especially his dodge on the outside is blocked.
DEMPO
POSITIVES
- Midfield snatching was good although I would blame Morgan’s strategy for allowing them too much space in the midfield. Both Penn and Mehtab was going down so deep to help out in defence that Dempo midfielders were having a lot of space to work with until Sanju’s introduction around the hour mark
- Subhasish Roy Chowdhury, safe hands under the bar
- The wing backs were very probing in attack with their runs given Morgan’s strategy of not utilising the flanks much, thus giving away all flank space to the opponent.
NEGATIVES
- Didn’t look like a champion team at all in both the second lag games against the Calcutta giants, once again shows Dempo succumbs to the slightest amount of pressure even on their home turf. This is way below expectations from a team with a set bunch of players, a set coach who has full control over the players to the point of deciding player salaries
- Creson Antao, terrible mistakes under pressure
- Rowilson Rodrigues, tripped Tolgay inside the box first ( the replay was shown at least a dozen times on TV, from various angles, including the referee position at the time of the incident, so there’s absolutely no doubt at all) and just outside the box a second time. After the second trip, he starting pushing Tolgay around, finally Mr. Chauhan after a long consultation with the assistant ref (wisdom dawned on him the second time) yellow carded Rowilson for the first time, when that should his second yellow earning him marching orders.
