KOCHI: After being confined to their team hotels and training pitches for a lengthy period of time, Kerala Blasters and ATK Mohun Bagan finally kickstarted the revamped and rescheduled ISL on Friday.
When the action got underway, it was on expected lines as ATK Mohun Bagan secured a hard-fought and deserving 1-0 win over Kerala at the GMC Athletic Stadium in Bambolim, Goa. Although ATK Mohun Bagan are a new entity in ISL, this is more or less the ATK side which lifted the title last season. And they picked up from where they left off as their star striker Roy Krishna scored the winner in the 67th minute.
There were various sub-plots going into the game like Kibu Vicuna going up against his old club and Sandesh Jhingan swapping the Blasters jersey for the Bagan one. And it was a cagey start to the game with players turning up to play after seven months. However, it was obvious that Bagan were executing their tactics better.
Vicuna's players enjoyed more possession and played out from the back but failed to create chances. Habas set his team up to hit on the counter and had more goalscoring chances and punished Blasters for a defensive lapse. There were ten debuts (three substitutes) for Kerala Blasters and this point was evident as players take time to get used to each other and the coach's system.
Bagan on the other hand were doing things like clockwork, with all the players on the same page. Despite winning the I-League last season, Habas had warned Vicuna that ISL was a different league. Vicuna and his players are slowly finding that out but the Spaniard knows that. On the evidence of this 90 minutes, Vicuna has his task cut out.