2009 SAFF Cup: India clinch title; Arindam in ‘Spiderman II’ act
A brilliant display by the Subrata ‘Spiderman’ Pal’s understudy and India U-23 shot stopper Arindam Bhattacharya helped India to clinch SAFF Cup 2009 defeating Maldives 3-1 in the penalty shoot-out in the final played at the Bangabandhu stadium today.
India took a sweet revenge of their last year defeat when they went down to Maldives in the 2008 SAFF Cup final by a solitary goal. This is the fifth SAAF Cup title for India since the inception of the tournament. The grand finale certainly proved to be a cracker as both the teams failed to break the deadlock in the regulation time.
It was certainly a game of two halves with equal chances felling for both the teams but neither team capitalized the chances that came their way. Maldives did started as hot favourite to win the SAFF Cup final after their emphatic 5-1 win over Sri Lanka in the semi-finals but were brought down to earth when Indian U-23 put up a convincing performance to deny Maldives to register their second SAFF Cup title.
India U-23 custodian Arindam Bhattacharya carried his splendid form and once again emerged as the star performer for his side as he pulled off two great saves in the penalty shoot-out to help India to win 8th edition of SAFF Cup championship (the first two edition was named as SAARC Championship ) and was named the ” Player of the Tournament”. Sukvinder Singh’s boys showed a great temperament throughout the match and put up a brave fight against the Maldives to record a great achievement under their belt.
For India, Khangembam Jeevan Singh, Denzil Franco and Subodh Kumar converted from the spot, while Nirmal Chetri spot-kick was wide of the post .Ibrahim Fazeel was the lone scorer for Maldives with Mukhtar Naseer, Ahmed Thoriq and Ali Ashfaaq missing from the spot.
Source: AIFF
December 14th, 2009 at 12:13 am
wow! Indian U-23s done the job. time 4r celebration. great news 4r Indian football.