CHENNAI: Outwitting Chennai Football Club 2-0, title contenders Chennai Customs registered their first full points in this edition’s St Joseph’s—Chennai Football Association Senior Division League. But they were left ruing the countless goal-scoring opportunities they hatched, even as the promoted Chennai Football Club stooped to their second successive defeat on Thursday.
That former champions Customs would win was a certainity, but the goal-margin mattered. The way they reeled off promised a goal-fest—as D Bharathiraja delivered with a fine volley as early as the fifth minute.
Upon obliging the ball from M Satishkumar, he slipped past his marksman before firing in the shot from the edge of the box. The angle was acute and hence the ball struck the far post, before being rebounded into the goal.
CFC is not a team good at defending, and despite the early goal they didn’t disperse deep. That nearly paid dividends, as they conjured up a couple of reasonable goal-scoring chances. They were awarded a free-kick in the 23rd minute but GV Gunasekar’s attempt at goal was wayward. Shortly R Aravindaraj headed straight at goalkeeper. The cross was nicely set-up at a friendly height, but his effort was so feeble that goalkeeper A Arun Pradeep gathered without fuss.
Soon after, Customs’ incursion gathered momentum and looked stinging any moment. Bharatirajan, again, was sumptuous through the flanks, and combined well with P Sudhakar and Satish Kumar to torment CFC’s defence over and again. But either the execution was poor as when Satish slipped with only the goalkeeper to beat — or the crossbar came to their rescue — Bharatiraja’s blinding shot thudded off the crossbar.
Nonetheless, CFC hung onto the one-goal deficit till half-time, but they could have parted in equivalence had D Raju been accurate with his header. The ball looped conveniently, but Raju, unmarked, timed his jump late that his header met the crossbar.
In a relatively anodyne second half, substitute K Vigneshwaran capped off Customs’ day with an 88th-minute goal, courtesy Bharatiraja’s neat pass from the right inside a crammed box. There were lot of positives for Customs, but if they are to lose the title in goal difference this particular match would haunt them.
Results: Chennai Customs 2 (Bharatiraja 5, K Vigneshwaran 88) bt Chennai Football Club 0; First Division: Nethaji Football Club 6 (D Thendral 37, 70, K Jayaprakash 49, 52, 56, K Sandeep 65) bt DBYC Kilpauk 0.