Viva salvages a point
Captain MP Sakeer salvaged a point for Viva Kerala against Salgaocar after Ekene Ikenva scored for the visitors in tempestuous 14th round match of the ONGC I-League.
Ekene Ikenva opened the scoring early on in the first half after Viva Kerala custodian Sharath K made a complete mess of a save. The ball rolled into the back of the goal in the 14th minute, after the keeper had made a decent save of Ikenva’s strike. This was also Salgaocar’s first goal of the Bencherifa era.
Viva Kerala missed two immediate chances to give a reply to Salgaocar. Karma missing both of his headers by a whisker. Eventually he was taken off from the match early after suffering an injury.
Slagaocar could have doubled their lead before the end of the first half if it wasn’t for another Ikenva goal to be disallowed by the referee Sreekrishna. Kalyan Chaubey was also excellent under the bars for the Goans as he denied Sakeer from distance a number of times throughout the match.
Melagres Gonsalves and Ikenva gave the Viva defence little respite in the first half, but it was Viva’s turn to go offensive in the second half of the game. Sakeer and Siraj created havoc in the Salgaocar goal mouth. Their efforts were rewarded in the 54th minute when Siraj sent Sakeer through and Sakeer placed the ball over the keeper in to the goal.
The home team pushed forward in search for the winning goal but no result was gained apart from a few long rangers from Sakeer and Siraj which ended up in the safe pair of hands of Kalyan Chaubey.
Source: the-aiff.com
