Royal United vs Football Lovers

Royal United vs Football lovers, 25th April 2010.

Sunday afternoon fixture between Royals and Football Lovers was poised to be a good competition, since both the teams
are from Kalyan and knew each other very well.

Team line-up for Royal United is as follows:
Sanoj Koran (ST), Milind W (GK), Rakesh M (CM), Rikesh J (CM), Blesson Mathew (RH)
Mahendra S (RB), Pankaj (LH), Richard (CB), Subheesh (LB), Devendra S (Fwd), Regi (Fwd)

Royal entered in the late afternoon game without any substitutes. Football lovers were a side full of experienced players
from Kalyan.

First Half:
Royal started keeping possession during the first half.
Football Lovers were unable to penetrate the Royal defense and were testing Milind Wandkhede, by taking long range shots.

Both the teams created many chances for themselves, but were unable to finish.
Football lovers came close on two occasions during the first half and were denied by some gutsy defending by Sanoj, Subheesh, Richard and Mahendra.

Royal also created couple of good chances. Devendra was instrumental in getting into positions and troubling the Football Lovers defenders. He missed out on a very good oppurtunity to score, which he had created. Many assists were coming from Devendra, but Royal were unable to convert these chances.

Baba for Football lovers was able to hit the bar on one occasion with his long range effort.

Rakesh was tripped in the the opponents half and a free kick was awarded to Royals.
Richard stepped up to take this one and placed it perfectly in the bracket, but Football lovers keeper was upto to his task.

Regi was brought down, little bit closer to the box. Richard once again provided a gem of a free kick, but Regi was unable to control the ball and take the shot on the goal. Eventually it was cleared away by the defenders and a corner was awarded. Blesson Mathew took the corner, but it was handled properly by the keeper.

Second Half:
Royal started the second half with a strategy to push football lovers deep into their own half and retain possession.
They retained possession and were putting pressure on Football Lovers defense. Devendra was slow on some nice through balls
from the mid-field.
Royal pushed harder and Regi was able to break through the defense into the box and took a shot on the goal, which the keeper was able to punch out. This fell onto the feet of Rakesh, who took a cracker of shoot and keeper had to make a diving save.
Football lovers keeper spilled the ball onto Regi's feet and he made no mistake in putting it behind the net.Rakesh and Rikesh were defending hard and were also creating chances up front.

Royals 1-0 Football Lovers

After conceding the goal, Football lovers started pushing harder and Royal were pushed deep into their own half.
Royal were now into desperate defending mode and were able to restrict the football lovers from scoring the goal.

Even after pushing so hard, Football lovers were unable to score and Royal United were the deserving winners.

All in all, it was a good game and the best team won.

Surprise package of the game was Devendra Sharma, who had many assists and was able to penetrate into the opponent box. Lack of speed was completely holding him back.